The complete works of Mark Twain [pseud.]

MARK TWAIN'S
SPEECHES

Mark Twain About 1880

AUTHORIZED EDITION

The Complete Works of

MARK
TWAIN

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MARK TWAIN'S
SPEECHES

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HARPER AND BROTHERS
NEW YORK

Mark Twain's Speeches

Copyright, 1923, by Mark Twain Company

Printed in the United States of America

I-D

CONTENTS

On After-dinner Speaking

PAGE
V

An Appreciation, by William Dean Howells . . .

Introduction, by Albert Bigelow Paine vii

On Speech-making Reform l

The Sandwich Islands 7

The American Vandal

Woman— An Opinion • • • 3I

Americans and the English 34

About London

The Ladies 4

License of the Press 4

The Weather 53

The Babies 5

The Story of a Speech 6 3

Unconscious Plagiarism 77

Accident Insurance °

83

Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims 86

On Adam 93

Speech of Samuel L. Clemens 9®

Advice to Youth I04

Speech I09

Turncoats

H3

A Tribute Il7

Consistency I2 °

CONTENTS

PAGE

Henry M. Stanley 1

On Stanley and Livingstone x -.

General Grant's Grammar j- s

The Old-fashioned Printer j- 8

Yale College Speech

J 4 2

Welcome Home (1889) I

On Foreign Critics

Mistaken Identity

J 54

Daly Theatre 7

Lotos Club Dinner in Honor of Mark Twain . . .161

An Undelivered Speech l64

Die Schrecken der Deutschen Sprache 268

The Horrors of the German Language !6 9

German for the Hungarians I76

To the Whitefriars I7 3

Authors' Club Ig

The Day We Celebrate l8 -

Theoretical and Practical Morals I9 o

Henry Irving Ig

Welcome Home (1900) jo-

Gal veston 1
Literature

Galveston Orphan Bazaar ,

207

Disappearance of Literature 20o

Public Education Society .211

Municipal Government 2I4

Municipal Corruption .218

Votes for Women 222

University Settlement Society 225

11

CONTENTS

PAGE

On Lincoln's Birthday 228

Osteopathy 232

Business 235

Dinner to Hamilton W. Mabie 239

The Dinner to Mr. Choate 242

Sixty-seventh Birthday 244

Seventieth Birthday 254

Russian Sufferers 263

Joan of Arc 269

Taxes and Morals 276

Layman's Sermon 281

Morals and Memory 284

When in Doubt, Tell the Truth 292

Introducing Doctor van Dyke 296

Billiards 302

"Mark Twain's First Appearance" 303

In Aid of the Blind 306

Spelling and Pictures 315

Copyright 323

Educating Theatre-goers 330

The Educational Theatre 333

Books, Authors, and Hats 335

Independence Day 344

The Savage Club Dinner 350

Charity and Actors 357

Fulton Day, Jamestown 359

The Alphabet and Simplified Spelling 364

Compliments and Degrees 368

111

CONTENTS

PAGE

Booksellers

375

Education and Citizenship 378

Dinner to Whitelaw Reio .382

Courage g6

Queen Victoria -g 7

Rogers and Railroads 3 3 9

IV

AN APPRECIATION

THESE speeches will address themselves to the
minds and hearts of those who read them, but
not with the effect they had with those who heard
them; Clemens himself would have said, not with
half the effect. I have noted elsewhere how he
always held that the actor doubled the value of the
author's words ; and he was a great actor as well as
a great author. He was a most consummate actor,
with this difference from other actors, that he was
the first to know the thoughts and invent the fancies
to which his voice and action gave the color of life.
Representation is the art of other actors; his art
was creative as well as representative; it was nothing
at second hand.

I never heard Clemens speak when I thought he had
quite failed; some burst or spurt redeemed him when
he seemed flagging short of the goal, and, whoever
else was in the running, he came in ahead. His near-
failures were the error of a rare trust to the spon-
taneity in which other speakers confide, or are
believed to confide, when they are on their feet. He
knew that from the beginning of oratory the orator's
spontaneity was for the silence and solitude of the
closet where he mused his words to an imagined
audience; that this was the use of orators from
Demosthenes and Cicero up and down. He studied

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

every word and syllable, and memorized them by a
system of mnemonics peculiar to himself, consisting
of an arbitrary arrangement of things on a table —
knives, forks, salt cellars; inkstands, pens, boxes, or
whatever was at hand — which stood for points and
clauses and climaxes, and were at once indelible
diction and constant suggestion. He studied every
tone and every gesture, and he forecast the result
with the real audience from its result with that
imagined audience. Therefore, it was beautiful to
see him and to hear him; he rejoiced in the pleasure
he gave and the blows of surprise which he dealt;
and because he had his end in mind, he knew when
to stop.

I have been talking of his method and manner; the
matter the reader has here before him; and it is
good matter, glad, honest, kind, just.

/ite5jf~^%,

VI

INTRODUCTION

MARK TWAIN made his first speech when he
was about twenty years old, at a printers'
''banquet," in Keokuk, Iowa. No fragment of
this early effort has survived the years, but his
hearers long recalled it as a hilarious perform-
ance which promptly qualified him for member-
ship in a debating society, where he became the chief
star. Doubtless he spoke on other festival occasions
of the moment, and one wishes that some slight
remnant of those beginnings might have been
preserved.

Keokuk was a brief incident in Mark Twain's
career. He was presently piloting on the Mississippi
River, where he was much regarded as a story-teller
by his associates, but if he ever spoke at a pilots'
dinner or at one of their meetings no record of the
fact is discoverable. It was not until he had left the
river several years behind him and had become a
sage-brush journalist, reporting the Nevada legisla-
ture, that we learn of another public appearance,
this time as Governor of the Third House, a bur-
lesque organization to which he delivered in person
his first (and last) "annual message." The Third
House threw open its doors to the public for the
event, levying a tax of a dollar on each admission,
for the benefit of the church. Very likely this was

vii

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

Mark Twain's first appearance before a mixed
audience, and if the memory of those present may-
be trusted his speech that night was the "greatest
effort of his life." Such a verdict is to be taken with
a liberal allowance for the enthusiasm and setting of
the occasion, and while we may regret that no sample
of that celebrated address has come down to us, we
may console ourselves in the thought that perhaps
it is just as well for its renown that this is so. Mark
Twain had at this time written very little that
would bear the test of years, and it seems probable
that his memorable message was for that day and
date only.

But now came a change — a large and important
change — in Mark Twain's intellectual life. One
might call it a "sea change," for it followed a trip
to the Sandwich Islands, where he had remained for
a period of four months, a considerable portion of
that time in almost daily intercourse with America's
distinguished statesman, Anson Burlingame, who
had stopped there on his way to China. Burlin-
game's example, companionship, and advice, coming
when it did, were in the nature of a revelation to
Samuel Clemens, who returned to San Francisco,
consciously or not, the inhabitant of a new domain.
His Sandwich Island letters to the Sacramento
Union had been nothing remarkable, but the lecture
he was persuaded to deliver a few months after his
return indicates a mental awakening, a growth in
vigor and poetic utterance that cannot be measured
by comparison with his earlier writings because it is
not of the same realm. Fortunately, some consider-

viii

INTRODUCTION

able portions of this first lecture have been preserved,
and the reader may judge for himself what the
Mark Twain of that day — he was then thirty-one —
had to say when, as he tells us, he appeared, " quak-
ing in every limb," the fear of failure in his heart.
The story of that evening, as set down in Roughing
It, is very good history, and need not be repeated here.
He subsequently delivered the lecture the length
of the Pacific coast, and finally at Cooper Union in
New York, just before sailing on the Quaker City
Holy Land excursion.

The result of the Quaker City venture was a series
of travel letters of quite a new sort, and Mark Twain
returned to find himself famous. Temporarily in
Washington, he was all at once in the midst of
receptions and dinners and much in demand as a
speech-maker. One example only of that time has
survived — his reply to the toast of "Woman" at a
banquet of the "Washington Correspondents' Club."
It does not seem particularly brilliant, as we read it
to-day, but it must have been so regarded at the
moment, for no less an authority than Vice-President
Schuyler Colfax pronounced it, "the best after-
dinner speech ever made." Doubtless it was a
refreshing departure from the prosy or clumsy-witted
efforts common to that period.

It is not the purpose here to set down a history
of Mark Twain's speech-making career. He was
fully launched, now, and the end would not come
until the final years of his life, his prestige and
popularity steadily growing until in those later days
he occupied a position which none thought even to

ix

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

approach. It may be worth while, however, to
record something of his methods of preparation and
delivery.

In the beginning he carefully wrote out his speeches,
learned them by heart, and practiced them in the
seclusion of his chamber. Later on he frequently
trusted himself to speak without any special prepara-
tion or notes, confident of picking up an idea from
the toastmaster's introduction or from some previous
speaker, usually asking to be placed third on the
list. But if the occasion was an important one he
wrote his speech and rehearsed it in the old way.
His manner of delivery did not change with the
years, except to become more finished, and to seem
less so, for it was his naturalness, his apparent lack
of all art, that was his greatest charm. One of
those who attended his earliest lectures spoke of his
exaggerated drawl of that day, his habit of loosely
lounging about the stage, his apparent indifference
to the audience. His later art was of the sort that
made the hearer forget that he was not being per-
sonally entertained by a new and wonderful friend,
who had come there for his particular benefit. One
listener has written that he sat "simmering with
laughter" through what he thought was a sort of
introduction, waiting for the traditional lecture to
begin, when presently with a bow the lecturer dis-
appeared and it was over. The listener looked at
his watch — he had been there for more than an hour.

His manner gave the impression of being entirely
unstudied, yet no one better than Mark Twain knew
the value of every gesture and particularly of every

INTRODUCTION

pause. He used to say, "The right word may be
effective, but no word was ever as effective as a
rightly timed pause." In his speech on "Speech-
making Reform," with which this volume opens, he
has given us, in semi-burlesque, a summary of his
own methods.

Mark Twain's speeches, as here collected, are
rather loosely separated into three periods : the first
division beginning with his San Francisco lecture,
continuing through those years when his conquest
of the world of letters had not yet lost its novelty,
when his blood was quick, when the gods were still
kind and his words in the main a lilt of good-
natured foolery. The middle period covers those
years when the affairs of men and nations began to
make a larger appeal, when political abuses and the
injustice of class began to stir him to active rebellion
and to righteous, even if violent, attitudes of reform.
The final group is of those later days when, full of
honors yet saddened by bereavement and the uncer-
tainty of life's adventures, he had become the philos-
opher and sage whose voice was sought on every
public question, whose humor was more gentle,
whose judgments had become mellowed and were all
the more welcome for that reason. The conclusion
of the Seventieth Birthday address and of the Liver-
pool speech are perhaps the most perfect examples of
his after-dinner art.*

Not to have heard Mark Twain is to have missed

*The closing paragraphs of the Liverpool speech were repeated
at the end of a speech made at the Lotos Club, N. Y., January u,
1908, and will be found so placed in this volume.

xi

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

much of the value of his utterance. He had immeas-
urable magnetism and charm, his face, surrounded by
its great mass of hair, pure white in old age, was one
of unusual beauty, having in repose that gravity
and pathos of which his whimsical humor and flicker-
ing smile were the break. No one could resist him —
probably nobody ever tried to do so.

Albert Bigelow Paine.

THE EARLY PERIOD

ON SPEECH-MAKING REFORM

After-dinner Speech, About 1884

I IKE many another well-intentioned man, I hava
j made too many speeches. And like other
transgressors of this sort, I have from time to time
reformed, binding myself, by oath, on New Year's
Days, to never make another speech. I found that
a new oath holds pretty well; but that when it is
become old and frayed out and damaged by a dozen
annual retyings of its remains, it ceases to be serv-
iceable; any little strain will snap it. So, last New
Year's Day I strengthened my reform with a money
penalty, and made that penalty so heavy that it
has enabled me to remain pure from that day to
this. Although I am falling once more, now, I
think I can behave myself from this out, because the
penalty is going to be doubled ten days hence. I
see before me and about me the familiar faces of
many poor, sorrowing fellow sufferers, victims of the
passion for speech making — poor, sad-eyed brothers
in affliction, who, fast in the grip of this fell, de-
grading, demoralizing vice, have grown weak with
struggling, as the years drifted by, and at last have
all but given up hope. To them I say, in this last
final obituary of mine, don't give up — don't do it;
there is still hope for you. I beseech you, swear one

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

more oath, and back it up with cash. I do not say
this to all, of course; for there are some among
you who are past reform; some who, being long
accustomed to success and to the delicious intoxi-
cation of the applause which follows it, are too
wedded to their dissipation to be capable now or
hereafter of abandoning it. They have thoroughly
learned the deep art of speech making, and they suffer
no longer from those misgivings and embarrass-
ments and apprehensions which are really the only
things that ever make a speech maker want to re-
form. They have learned their art by long obser-
vation and slowly compacted experience; so now
they know what they did not know at first, that the
best and most telling speech is not the actual im-
promptu one, but the counterfeit of it; they know
that that speech is most worth listening to which
has been carefully prepared in private and tried on a
plaster cast, or an empty chair, or any other appre-
ciative object that will keep quiet until the speaker
has got his matter and his delivery limbered up so
that they will seem impromptu to an audience.
The expert knows that. A touch of indifferent
grammar flung in here and there, apparently at
random, has a good effect — often restores the con-
fidence of a suspicious audience. He arranges these
errors in private ; for a really random error wouldn't
do any good; it would be sure to fall in the wrong
place. He also leaves blanks here and there — leaves
them where genuine impromptu remarks can be
dropped in, of a sort that will add to the natural
aspect of the speech without breaking its line of

ON SPEECH-MAKING REFORM

march. At the banquet he listens to the other
speakers, invents happy turns upon remarks of
theirs, and sticks these happy turns into his blanks,
for impromptu use by and by when he shall be-
called up. When this expert rises to his feet, he
looks around over the house with the air of a man
who has just been strongly impressed by something..
The uninitiated cannot interpret his aspect; but
the initiated can.

They know what is coming. When the noise of
the clapping and stamping has subsided this veteran
says: "Aware that the hour is late, Mr. Chairman,
it was my intention to abide by a purpose which
I framed in the beginning of the evening— to simply
rise and return my duty and thanks, in case I should
be called upon, and then make way for men more
able and who have come with something to say..
But, sir, I was so struck by General Smith's remark
concerning the proneness of evil to fly upward, that"
— etc., etc., etc., and before you know it he has.
slidden smoothly along on his compliment to the
general, and out of it and into his set speech, and
you can't tell, to save you, where it was nor when it
was that he made the connection. And that man
will soar along, in the most beautiful way, on the
wings of a practiced memory, heaving in a little
decayed grammar here, and a little wise tautology-
there, and a little neatly counterfeited embarrass-
ment'yonder, and a little finely acted stumbling and
stammering for a word, rejecting this word and that,
and finally getting the right one, and fetching it
out with ripping effect, and with the glad look of a.

3

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

man who has got out of a bad hobble entirely by
accident — and wouldn't take a hundred dollars
down for that accident ; and every now and then he
will sprinkle you in one of those happy turns on
something that has previously been said; and at
last, with supreme art, he will catch himself, when
in the very act of sitting down, and lean over the
table and fire a parting rocket, in the way of an
afterthought, which makes everybody stretch his
mouth as it goes up, and dims the very stars in
heaven when it explodes. And yet that man has
been practicing that afterthought and that attitude
for about a week.

Well, you can't reform that kind of a man. It's
a case of EH joined to his idols. Let him alone. But
there is one sort that can be reformed. That is the
genuine impromptu speaker. I mean the man who
"didn't expect to be called upon and isn't prepared,' '
and yet goes waddling and warbling along, just as if
he thought it wasn't any harm to commit a crime so
long as it wasn't premeditated. Now and then he
says, "but I must not detain you longer"; every
little while he says, "Just one word more and I am
done" — but at these times he always happens to
think of two or three more unnecessary things and
so he stops to say them. Now that man has no way
of finding out how long his windmill is going. He
likes to hear it creak, and so he goes on creaking,
and Hstening to it. and enjoying it, never thinking
of the flight of time; and when he comes to sit down
at last and look under his hopper, he is the most
surprised person in the house to see what a little bit

4

ON SPEECH-MAKING REFORM

of a grist he has ground and how unconscionably
long he has been grinding it. As a rule, he finds
that he hasn't said anything — a discovery which the
unprepared man ought always to make, and does
usually make — and has the added grief of making
it at second hand, too.

This is a man who can be reformed. And so can
his near relative, who now rises out of my recon-
structed past — the man who provisions himself with
a single prepared bite of a sentence or so, and trusts
to luck to catch quails and manna as he goes along.
This person frequently gets left. You can easily
tell when he has finished his prepared bit and begun
on the impromptu part. Often the prepared portion
has been built auring the banquet ; it may consist of
ten sentences, but it oftener consists of two — oftenest
of all, it is but a single sentence; and it has seemed
so happy and pat and bright and good that the
creator of it, the person that laid it, has been sitting
there cackling privately over it and admiring it and
petting it and shining it up and imagining how fine
it is going to "go," when, of course, he ought to have
been laying another one, and still another one, and
maybe a basketful, if it's a fruitful day; yes, and he
is thinking that when he comes to hurl that egg at
the house there is going to be such electric explosion
of applause that the inspiration of it will fill him
instantly with ideas and clothe the ideas in brilliant
language, and that an impromptu speech will result
which will be infinitely finer than anything he could
have deliberately prepared. But there are two dam-
aging things which he is leaving out of the cal-

5

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

culation: one is the historical fact that a man is
never called up as soon as he thinks he is going to be
called up, and that every speech that is injected into
the proceedings ahead of him gives his fires an added
chance to cool ; and the other thing which he is for-
getting is that he can't sit there and keep saying that
fine sentence of his over and over to himself for three
quarters of an hour without by and by getting a
trifle tired of it and losing somewhat of confidence
in it.

When at last his chance comes and he touches off
his pet sentence, it makes him sick to see how shame-
facedly and apologetically he has done it, and how
compassionate the applause is, and how sorry every-
body feels; and then he bitterly thinks what a lie
it is to call this a free country, where none but the
unworthy and the undeserving may swear. And at
this point, naked and blind and empty, he swallows
off into his real impromptu speech; stammers out
three or four incredibly flat things, then collapses

into his seat, murmuring, "I wish I was in "

He doesn't say where, because he doesn't. The
stranger at his left, says, "Your opening was very
good"; stranger at his right says, "I liked your
opening"; man opposite says, "Opening very good
indeed — very good"; two or three other people
mumble something about his opening. People
always feel obliged to pour some healing thing on a
crippled man that way. They mean it for oil ; they
think it is oil; but the sufferer recognizes it for
aquafortis.

THE SANDWICH ISLANDS

Extracts From Mark Twain's First Lecture, Originally

Delivered at Maguire's Academy of Music, San

Francisco, October 2, 1866. Many Times

Repeated in This Country and

Great Britain

TO cut the matter short the Sandwich Isles are
2,100 miles southwest from San Francisco, but
why they were put away out there in the middle of
the Pacific, so far away from any place and in such
an inconvenient locality, is no business of ours — it
was the work of Providence and is not open to
criticism. The subject is a good deal like many
others we should like to inquire into, such as, What
mosquitoes were made for, etc., but under the cir-
cumstances we naturally feel a delicacy about doing
it. They are a dozen in number, of volcanic origin —
eight of them inhabited and four of them the most
marvelously productive sugar land in the known
world. Eighty years ago there was a population of
400,000 on the islands, but only 50,000 now. The
Kanaka race is rapidly passing away. . . .

It is said by some, and believed, that Kanakas
won't lie, but I know they will lie — lie like auction-
eers — lie like lawyers — lie like patent-medicine adver-
tisements — they will almost lie like newspaper men.
They will lie for a dollar when they could get a

7

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

dollar and a half for telling the truth. They never
tell a traveler the right road or right distance to a
place. Christian Kanakas will go into court and
swear on the Bible and then stand up and lie till the
lights burn blue around them, and then go home and
go through a lot of purifying idolatrous ceremonies
and the thing is all straight. There is only one way
of getting them to tell the truth, on the stand or
anywhere else — and that it to swear them on the
Great Shark God, which seems to have been the
most potent personage in their idolatrous mythology.
In old times, when the priests fancied that the shark
god was angry or out of sorts about anything and
stood in need of a sacrifice to compose his spirits,
they used to go forth and lasso a poor wretch of a
plebeian native and cast him into the sea where the
sharks could devour him. And to this day, in the
island of Hawaii, they fear and respect this deity,
and when they swear by him they keep the oath
and tell the truth. And yet the unsagacious judges
go on swearing such witnesses on the Scriptures —
and refuse to profit by our keener judgment. When
we have a Chinese witness on an important case we
swear him on a butchered chicken.

And cheat ? They will cheat anybody. They used
to be arrant thieves in old times, and now they are
arrant rascals — arrant knaves. They measure a
stranger by the eye, and begin to average him as
soon as he gets into their cabin. If he knows the
language and is only pretending to be a stranger, he
will hear them comment on him and his probable
errand very freely. They will wonder if he is a

THE SANDWICH ISLANDS

missionary — and shake their heads and say no, looks
too worldly for a missionary; and wonder if he is a
Calif ornian — no, not quick-motioned enough for a
Calif ornian; and so on. If they determine that you
are a missionary, they will offer to have family
prayers; if they decide that you are a Calif ornian,
they will proceed to swindle you. To them, anybody
who doesn't live in the islands is usually a Calif ornian,
no matter where he comes from. If you merely want
to stay all night, stay and welcome, eat their poi and
raw fish and welcome, make yourself at home — for
theirs is the freest hospitality in the world. It is
customary to pay them, but the offer must come
from you; they would never ask it. But if you want
to trade, if you want to buy anything, they will
manage to get ahead of you, somehow or other,
nearly every time. They have always got a sore-
back horse lying around somewhere to sell to the
stranger. They will sell him a young chicken and
then cook him one that remembered Noah's ark and
the Deluge. A Kanaka will hire a stranger a horse
for a dollar, and then demand $2.50 when he gets
back, and say he doesn't know anything about the
original bargain — his brother made it and then went
to the country. These niggers have generally got a
brother nigger on the fence — or in the country.

These natives are strange people — they can die
whenever they want to — don't mind dying any more
than a jilted Frenchman. When they take a notion
to die, they die, no matter whether anything matters
or not; they will lie right down sometimes and say
they are going to die, and can't be persuaded other-

9

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

wise — have got ready to die, made up their minds to
die, and will die, in spite of all.

A gentleman in Hawaii asked his servant if he
wouldn't like to die and have a big funeral. He said
yes, and looked happy, and the next morning the
overseer came and said, "That boy of yours laid
down and died last night and said you were going
to give him a fine funeral."

They are more civilized and Christianized than
they used to be, but still they believe an enemy can
offer incantations to the idols and pray them to
death. Three Kanakas on one whaleship that left
the islands last year died one after the other, from
no apparent cause, and each said it was no use to
try to save them, for they knew some enemy at
home was praying them to death. I know there is
something in it — albeit it is rank idolatry — and I
sincerely feel for these poor creatures. Even in this
Christian city I went to church last Sunday and
came mighty near getting prayed to death myself.

The Kanakas are passionately fond of dogs — not
great, magnificent Newfoundlands or stately mastiffs
or graceful greyhounds — but a species of little, puny,
cowardly, sneaking, noisy cur that a white man
would condemn to death on general principles. They
love these puppies better than they love one another
— better than their children or their religion. They
feed them — stuff them — with poi and fish, from their
own calabashes when the supply is scanty, and even
the family must go hungry. They sleep with them;
they don't mind the fleas. Men and women carry
these dogs in their arms, always. If they have got

10

THE SANDWICH ISLANDS

to walk a mile, the dog must be carried — or five
miles, for that matter — while the little children walk.
The dog travels in the schooners with them. I have
seen a puppy hugged and caressed by a mother, and
her little, tired, sore-footed child cuffed and slapped
for stumbling to the ground and crying. When the
woman rides on horseback, she often carries the
puppy in front of her on the horse; and when the
man rides — they nearly always go in a keen gallop —
the puppy stands up behind the saddle, "thortships,"
as a sailor would say, and sways gently to and fro to
the motion of the horse. No danger of its falling;
it is educated to ride thus from earliest puppy hood.
They passionately love and tenderly care for the
puppy, and feed it from their own hands until it is
a full-grown dog — and then they cook it and eat it.

I did not eat any dog. I ate raw salt pork and poi,
and that was bad enough, but I was lost in the woods
and hungry.

I do not see where old Kanehameha got his fierce
warriors. He was a great warrior, you know — a
Kanaka Napoleon — and in the old times when the
feudal system prevailed and the islands were so
divided up that there was an average of three kings
to an acre, he held four aces once and took them all
in and combined the whole concern under one
sovereignty. He fought many great battles, but I
cannot think where he got his fighting material, for
certainly the Kanakas of the present day are the
most peaceable, inoffensive, unwarlike creatures
imaginable. One would as soon expect a rabbit to
fight as one of these. You often see them quarreling

ii

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

— doubling their fists and striking them together,
and making frightful grimaces, and hurling curses
and the deadliest insults at one another, even strik-
ing out savagely within an inch of one another's
faces — and just as you think blood is going to flow,
just as you think there is going to be a Kanaka for
breakfast, it all ends in smoke. They go off growling
and viciously shaking their heads. The army of the
Hawaiian Islands consists of two hundred men (they
have got a Secretary of War there — and a Secretary
of the Navy, too, for that matter, but not any ships ;
and a Minister of Finance also — Harris — and if he
stays there they won't have any money shortly).
The army consists of two hundred men, but it is
not on a war footing, now, happily. Some of the
muskets haven't got any locks to them, and the
others haven't got any ramrods.

Kanakas are fond of horses, and they have got
plenty of them. They seldom walk anywhere ; they
nearly always ride. Whenever you see a lot of men
and women at work in a sugar plantation, you will
see as many horses hitched at hand for them to ride
a quarter of a mile home on. These horses are worth
on an average about seven dollars and a half apiece
(you can often buy them for less, though), and they
have to pay a government tax of a dollar a head on
them. But that doesn't matter. A Kanaka with
an income of fifty dollars a year will keep half a
dozen horses, if it breaks him. And he is as unkind
and as unmerciful to his horse as he is disgustingly
fond of his puppy. His horse is seldom well fed and
is always hard ridden. And they can make a horse

12

THE SANDWICH ISLANDS

go when a white man can't. If there is any of that
capacity in a horse the Kanaka will get it out. I
once rode over a mountain in Mani with a white man
whose horse was so lean and spiritless and worthless
that he could not be persuaded or spurred out of a
walk, and he kept going to sleep, besides — at least
he seemed to. But the man said that when he got
to Maaleo Bay he would find one of his own horses
there — a blooded animal that could outstrip the
wind. He got his blooded animal, and gave the
slow horse to a Kanaka boy and told him to follow.
Then he put his blooded steed to his utmost speed
to show him off. But the Kanaka, without spur or
whip, or scarcely any appearance of urging, sailed
by us on the old plug, and stayed ahead, and in
eight miles he beat us out of sight. I never could
understand how those savages managed to make
those wretched horses travel so. They are wild,
free riders, and perfectly at home in the saddle —
they call it a saddle, a little vile English spoon of a
thing with a girth that never is tight enough to
touch the horse and sometimes without any girth
at all. With their loose ideas, they never cinch a
Calif ornian's horse tight enough to suit him.

When a Kanaka rides through the country, he
stops fifteen or twenty minutes at every single cabin
he comes to, and has a chat. Consequently their
horses early acquire an inveterate habit of stopping,
and they cannot be cured of it. If you attempt to
keep them in the road and go on about your business,
they grow frantic and kick up and charge around
fiercely, and finally take the bits in their mouths

13

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

and cany you to the cabin by main force. I rode
Kanaka horses nearly altogether. When I made the
tour of that pleasant country I hadn't any business
at any of the roadside cabins, but I stopped at them
all. The horses wanted to stop, and I had to put
up with it. That is how I happen to have such an
intimate knowledge of the country and the people.

The Kanaka women all ride, and ride well and
gracefully. They ride as women should ride — astride.
To ride sidewise tires the horse, makes his back sore
and his footing insecure, and endangers the life of
the rider. A sidesaddle is always turning and spill-
ing its precious freight into the mud or on the rocks
and bruising the limbs or breaking the neck of the
same. For a woman to ride sidewise is to do an
awkward, ungainly, absurd, and to the last degree
foolish and perilous thing.

Kanakas are cruel by nature. They will put a live
chicken in the hot embers merely to see it caper
about. They used to be cruel to themselves before
the missionaries came. They used to tear and burn
their flesh, or shave their heads, or pluck out their
eyes, or knock out a couple of their front teeth,
when a great chief died. And if their bereavement
were particularly sore and hard to bear, they would
go out and murder a neighbor. There was no law
against it. The largest liberty in the matter of
mourning was permitted. But the missionaries have
done away with all that.

Down there in the islands they have exploded one
of our most ancient and trusted maxims. It was a
maxim that we have all of us implicitly believed in

14

THE SANDWICH ISLANDS

and revered — and now it turns out to be a swindling
humbug. Be virtuous and you will be happy. The
Kanakas are not virtuous — neither men, women, nor
children — and yet they are the happiest creatures
the sun shines on. They are as happy as the day is
long. They wail and carry on grievously when a
friend or relative dies, but it is all a pretense; they
do precisely the same thing when a friend returns
from a month's absence. In both instances the
tears are manufactured to order and the joy and
sorrow counterfeited. A woman returns from a dis-
tance and a lot of her female friends will huddle
around her on the ground and twine their arms about
her and weep and whine and blubber and howl for
an hour — and they would cheerfully repeat the same
thing the next day if she died, and dance the hula-
hula into the bargain. It is rarely that they show
any genuine tribulation. Theirs is a state of placid
happiness. All they want is unfettered liberty to
eat, drink, sleep, sing, dance, swindle, lie, and pray,
and then, whether school keeps or not is a matter
of no interest to them.

The natives do everything wrong end foremost.
When you meet one on horseback he turns out on
the wrong side; they cinch a horse on the wrong
side and mount him from the wrong side; their
lineage and rank come down from the female ancestor
instead of the male ; the women smoke more than the
men; the natives' English "no" generally means
"yes"; they eat their fish raw, and bathe in the
middle of the day; instead of keeping it from a
patient that he is likely to die, they tell him early;

is

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

when they beckon to a person to come, they motion
the hand in the opposite direction; the only native
bird that has handsome feathers has only two, and
they are under its wings instead of on top of its
head; frequently a native cat has a tail only two
inches long and has got a knot tied in the end of it;
the native duck lives on the dry tops of mountains
5,000 feet high; the natives always stew chickens
instead of baking them; they dance at funerals and
sing a dismal heart-broken dirge when they are
happy; and with atrocious perverseness they wash
your shirts with a club and iron them with a brickbat.

In old times the Kanaka king was the owner of all
the lands and supreme head of church and state.
He was absolute. His word was superior to all law.
His person was sacred. If a common man passed
his house without prostrating himself, if he came
near the king with his head wet, if he ventured to
stand on a hillock that brought him higher than the
level the king stood on, if his intangible and harmless
shadow fell upon the king's royal person — that man
had to die ; there was no salvation for him. Thus sacred
was the presence and the belongings of those naked,
greasy, mud-colored, regal savages. The king had
the power of life and death and liberty over all. He
could place a taboo (prohibition) upon any spot or
thing or person, and it was death for any man to
molest it.

The high priest came next in authority — decreed
the human sacrifices and captured the doomed men
and butchered them. They regulated and bossed all
such matters under the king. The chiefs came next.

16

THE SANDWICH ISLANDS

They held the lands by feudal tenure from the king
and owed him service, as in England in the old
baronial days. The common Kanakas came next;
they were the slaves of the chiefs— sweated and
labored for them and were cruelly maltreated in
return.

After these came the women, and they were the
abject slaves of the men; they were degraded to the
rank of brutes and beasts and considered to be no
better; they were kept at hard labor and were
beaten and contemptuously treated by their lords.
By the taboo it was death for them to sit at the
tables with their husbands, or to eat of the choice
fruits of the lands, such as bananas, pineapples, etc.,
at any time. They seemed to have had a sort of
dim knowledge of what came of women eating fruit '
in the Garden of Eden and they didn't feel justified
in taking any more chances. And it is wisdom—
unquestionably it is wisdom. Adam wasn't strict
enough; Eve broke the taboo, and hence comes all
this trouble. Can't be too particular about fruit—
with women.

They were a rusty set all round, those Kanakas,
in those days. But the missionaries came and
knocked off the shackles from the whole race-
broke the power of the king and the chiefs and set
the common man free and elevated his wife to an
equality with him, and got a patch of land set apart
and secured to each to hold forever. And the mis-
sionaries set up schools and churches and printing
presses and taught the people the Christian religion,
after a fashion, and taught the whole nation to read

17

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

and write with facility in the native tongue — and
now I suppose there is not an uneducated Kanaka
in the kingdom.

The natives of the Sandwich Islands are dark
brown. Their tropical sun and the easy-going ways
inherited from their ancestors have made them
"rather lazy, perhaps, but they are not vicious. Nor
yet virtuous, altogether.

The missionaries have educated them and have
about half civilized and half christianized them.
You may well say, "Well done, good and faithful
servants !" for mortal man could not have accom-
plished more with such material to work upon.

The native women in the rural districts wear a
single long, loose garment, but the men don't. They
don't wear anything to speak of. They would cheer-
fully wear a plug hat and a vest if they had them,
but they haven't. . . .

If you would see magnificent scenery — scenery on
a mighty scale — and get scenery which charms with
its softness and delights you with its unspeakable
beauty, at the same moment that it deeply impresses
you with its grandeur and its sublimity, you should
go to the islands.

Each island is a mountain — or two or three moun-
tains. They begin at the seashore — in a torrid
climate where the cocoa palm grows, and the coffee
tree, the mango, orange, banana, and the delicious
chirinoya; they begin down there in a sweltering
atmosphere, rise with a grand and gradual sweep till
they hide their beautiful regalia of living green in
the folds of the drooping clouds, and higher and

18

THE SANDWICH ISLANDS

higher yet they rise among the mists till their
emerald forests change to dull and stunted shrubbery,
then to scattering constellations of the brilliant silver
sword, then higher yet to dreary, barren desolation —
no trees, no shrubs, nothing but torn and scorched
and blackened piles of lava; higher yet, and then,
towering toward heaven, above the dim and distant
land, above the waveless sea, and high above the
rolling plains of clouds themselves, stands the awful
summit, wrapped in a mantle of everlasting ice and
snow and burnished with a tropical sunshine that
fires it with a dazzling splendor ! Here one may stand
and shiver in the midst of eternal winter and look
down upon a land reposing in the loveliest hues of a
summer that hath no end.

Such is Mauna Loa — 16,000 feet high by recent
and accurate measurement, and such is Mauna Kea,
14,000 feet high. . . .

The natives are indifferent to volcanic terrors.
During the progress of an eruption they ate, drank,
bought, sold, planted, builded, apparently indif-
ferent to the roar of consuming forests, the sight of
devouring fire, the startling detonations, the hissing
of escaping steam, the rending of the earth, the
shivering and melting of gigantic rocks, the raging
and dashing of the fiery waves, the bellowings and
unearthly mutterings coming up from a burning
deep. They went carelessly on, amid the rain of
ashes, sand, and fiery scintillations, gazing vacantly
on the ever-varying appearance of the atmosphere,
murky, black, livid, blazing, the sudden rising of
lofty pillars of flame, the upward curling of ten

19

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

thousand columns of smoke, and their majestic roll
in dense and lurid clouds. All these moving phe-
nomena were regarded by them as the fall of a
shower or the running of a brook; while to others
they were as the tokens of a burning world, the
departing heavens, and a coming judge. . . .

20

THE AMERICAN VANDAL

Extracts From a Lecture Widely Delivered by Mark

Twain Following His Return From the "Quaker

City" Excursion, November, 1867, and

Prior to the Publication of the

"Innocents Abroad," July, 1869

I AM to speak of the American Vandal this eve-
ning, but I wish to say in advance that I do not
use this term in derision or apply it as a reproach,
but I use it because it is convenient; and duly and
properly modified, it best describes the roving, inde-
pendent, free-and-easy character of that class of
traveling Americans who are not elaborately edu-
cated, cultivated, and refined, and gilded and fili-
greed with the ineffable graces of the first society.
The best class of our countrymen who go abroad
keep us well posted about their doings in foreign
lands, but their brethren vandals cannot sing their
own praises or publish their adventures.

The American Vandal gallops over England, Scot-
land, Spain, and Switzerland, and finally brings up
in Italy. He thinks it is the proper thing to visit
Genoa, the stately old City of Palaces, whose vast
marble edifices almost meet together over streets
so narrow that three men can hardly walk abreast
in them, and so crooked that a man generally comes
out of them about the same place he went in. He

21

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

only stays in Genoa long enough to see a few cele-
brated things and get some fragments of stone from
the house Columbus was born in — for your genuine
Vandal is an intolerable and incorrigible relic
gatherer. It is estimated that if all the fragments of
stone brought from Columbus's house by travelers
were collected together they would suffice to build
a house fourteen thousand feet long and sixteen
thousand feet high — and I suppose they would.

Next he hurries to Milan and takes notes of the
Grand Cathedral (for he is always taking notes).
Oh, I remember Milan and the noble cathedral well
enough — that marble miracle of enchanting architec-
ture. I remember how we entered and walked about
its vast spaces and among its huge columns, gazing
aloft at the monster windows all aglow with bril-
liantly colored scenes in the life of the Savior and
his followers. And I remember the side-shows and
curiosities there, too. The guide showed us a coffee-
colored piece of sculpture which he said was con-
sidered to have come from the hand of Phidias, since
it was not possible that any other man, of any epoch,
could have copied nature with such faultless accuracy.
The figure was that of a man without a skin; with
every vein, artery, muscle, every fiber and tendon
and tissue of the human frame, represented in minute
detail. It looked natural, because it looked some-
how as if it were in pain. A skinned man would be
likely to look that way — unless his attention were
occupied by some other matter. . . .

The Vandal goes to see the ancient and most
celebrated painting in the world, "The Last Supper."

22

THE AMERICAN VANDAL

We all know it in engravings: the disciples all sitting
on side of a long, plain table and Christ with bowed
head in the center — all the last suppers in the world
are copied from this painting. It is so damaged now,
by the wear and tear of three hundred years, that
the figures can hardly be distinguished. The Vandal
goes to see this picture — which all the world praises
— looks at it with a critical eye, and says it's a per-
fect old nightmare of a picture and he wouldn't give
forty dollars for a million like it (and I indorse his
opinion), and then he is done with Milan.

He paddles around the Lake of Como for a few
days, and then takes the cars. He is bound for
Venice, the oldest and the proudest and the prince-
liest republic that ever graced the earth. We put
on a good many airs with our little infant of a
Republic of a century's growth, but we grow modest
when we stand before this gray, old imperial city
that used to laugh the armies and navies of half the
world to scorn, and was a haughty, invincible, mag-
nificent Republic for fourteen hundred years! The
Vandal is bound for Venice! He has a long, long,
weary ride of it; but just as the day is closing he
hears some one shout, "Venice!" and puts his head
out of the window, and sure enough, afloat on the
placid sea, a league away, lies the great city with its
towers and domes and steeples drowsing in a golden
mist of sunset !

Have you been to Venice, and seen the winding
canals, and the stately edifices that border them all
along, ornamented with the quaint devices and
sculptures of a former age? And have you seen the

23

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

great Cathedral of St. Mark's — and the Giant's
Staircase — and the famous Bridge of Sighs — and the
great Square of St. Mark's — and the ancient pillar
with the winged Hon of St. Mark that stands in it,
whose story and whose origin are a mystery — and
the Rial to, where Shylock used to loan money on
human flesh and other collateral ?

I had begun to feel that the old Venice of song and
story had departed forever. But I was too hasty.
When we swept gracefully out into the Grand Canal
and under the mellow moonlight the Venice of poetry
and romance stood revealed. Right from the water's
edge rose palaces of marble; gondolas were gliding
swiftly hither and thither and disappearing suddenly
through unsuspected gates and alleys; ponderous
stone bridges threw their shadows athwart the glit-
tering waves. There were life and motion every-
where, and yet everywhere there was a hush, a
stealthy sort of stillness, that was suggestive of
secret enterprises of bravos and of lovers; and clad
half in moonbeams and half in mysterious shadows,
the grim old mansions of the republic seemed to
have an expression about them of having an eye out
for just such enterprises as these. At that same
moment music came stealing over the waters — Venice
was complete.

Our Vandals hurried away from Venice and scat-
tered abroad everywhere. You could find them
breaking specimens from the dilapidated tomb of
Romeo and Juliet at Padua — and infesting the pic-
ture galleries of Florence — and risking their necks on
the Leaning Tower of Pisa — and snuffing sulphur

24

THE AMERICAN VANDAL

fumes on the summit of Vesuvius — and burrowing
among the exhumed wonders of Herculaneum and
Pompeii — and you might see them with spectacles
on, and blue cotton umbrellas under their arms,
benignantly contemplating Rome from the venerable
arches of the Coliseum.

And finally we sailed from Naples, and in due time
anchored before the Piraeus, the seaport of Athens in
Greece. But the quarantine was in force, and so
they set a guard of soldiers to watch us and would
not let us go ashore. However, I and three other
Vandals took a boat, and muffled the oars, and
slipped ashore at 1 1.30 at night, and dodged the guard
successfully. Then we made a wide circuit around
the slumbering town, avoiding all roads and houses —
for they'd about as soon hang a body as not for
violating the quarantine laws in those countries. We
got around the town without any accident, and then
struck out across the Attic Plain, steering straight
for Athens — over rocks and hills and brambles and
everything — with Mt. Helicon for a landmark. And
so we tramped for five or six miles. The Attic Plain
is a mighty uncomfortable plain to travel in, even if
it is so historical. The armed guards got after us
three times and flourished their gleaming gun barrels
in the moonlight, because they thought we were steal-
ing grapes occasionally — and the fact is we were — for
we found by and by that the brambles that tripped us
up so often were grape-vines — but these people in the
country didn't know that we were quarantine-blockade
runners, and so they only scared us and jawed Greek
at us, and let us go, instead of arresting us.

25

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

We didn't care about Athens particularly, but we
wanted to see the famous Acropolis and its ruined
temples, and we did. We climbed the steep hill of
the Acropolis about one in the morning and tried to
storm that grand old fortress that had scorned the
battles and sieges of three thousand years. We had
the garrison out mighty quick — four Greeks — and
we bribed them to betray the citadel and unlock
the gates. In a moment we stood in the presence
of the noblest ruins we had ever seen — the most
elegant, the most graceful, the most imposing. The
renowned Parthenon towered above us, and about
us were the wreck of what were once the snowy
marble Temples of Hercules and Minerva, and an-
other whose name I have forgotten. Most of the
Parthenon's grand columns are still standing, but the
roof is gone.

As we wandered down the marble-paved length of
this mighty temple, the scene was strangely impres-
sive. Here and there in lavish profusion were gleam-
ing white statues of men and women, propped
against blocks of marble, some of them armless,
some without legs, others headless, but all looking
mournful and sentient and startlingly human ! They
rose up and confronted the midnight intruder on
every side ; they stared at him with stony eyes from
unlooked-for nooks and recesses ; they peered at him
over fragmentary heaps far down the desolate cor-
ridors ; they barred his way in the midst of the broad
forum, and solemnly pointed with handless arms the
way from the sacred fane; and through the roofless
temple the moon looked down and banded the floor

26

THE AMERICAN VANDAL

and darkened the scattered fragments and broken
statues with the slanting shadows of the columns !

What a world of ruined sculpture was about us!
Stood up in rows, stacked up in piles, scattered
broadcast over the wide area of the Acropolis, were
hundreds of crippled statues of all sizes and of the
most exquisite workmanship ; and vast fragments of
marble that once belonged to the entablatures,
covered with bas-reliefs representing battles and
sieges, ships of war with three and four tiers of oars,
pageants and processions — everything one could
think of.

We walked out into the grass-grown, fragment-
strewn court beyond the Parthenon. It startled
us every now and then, to see a stony white face
stare suddenly up at us out of the grass, with its
dead eyes. The place seemed alive with ghosts. We
half expected to see the Athenian heroes of twenty
centuries ago glide out of the shadows and steal into
the old temple they knew so well and regarded with
such boundless pride.

The full moon was riding high in the cloudless
heavens now. We sauntered carelessly and unthink-
ingly to the edge of the lofty battlements of the
citadel, and looked down, and, lo! a vision! And
such a vision ! Athens by moonlight ! All the beauty
in all the world combined could not rival it! The
prophet that thought the splendors of the New Jeru-
salem were revealed to him, surely saw this instead.
It lay in the level plain right under our feet — all
spread abroad like a picture — and we looked down
upon it as we might have looked from a balloon.

27

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

We saw no semblance of a street, but every house,
every window, every clinging vine, every projection,
was as distinct and sharply marked as if the time
were noonday; and yet there was no glare, no
glitter, nothing harsh or repulsive — the silent city
was flooded with the mellowest light that ever
streamed from the moon, and seemed like some liv-
ing creature wrapped in peaceful slumber. On its
farther side was a little temple whose delicate pillars
and ornate front glowed with a rich luster that
chained the eye like a spell; and, nearer by, the
palace of the king reared its creamy walls out of the
midst of a great garden of shrubbery that was flecked
all over with a random shower of amber lights — a
spray of golden sparks that lost their brightness in
the glory of the moon and glinted softly upon the
sea of dark foliage like the palled stars of the Milky
Way! Overhead, the stately columns, majestic still
in their ruin; underfoot, the dreaming city; in the
distance the silver sea — not on the broad earth is
there another picture half so beautiful !

We got back to the ship safely, just as the day
was dawning. We had walked upon pavements that
had been pressed by Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes,
Socrates, Phocion, Euclid, Xenophon, Herodotus,
Diogenes, and a hundred others of deathless fame,
and were satisfied. We got to stealing grapes again
on the way back, and half a dozen rascally guards
with muskets and pistols captured us and marched us
in the center of a hollow square nearly to the sea — till
we were beyond all the graperies. Military escort —
ah, I never traveled in so much state in all my life.

28

THE AMERICAN VANDAL

I leave the Vandal here. I have not time to follow
him farther — nor our Vandals to Constantinople and
Smyrna and the Holy Land, Egypt, the islands of the
sea, and to Russia and his visit to the emperor. But
I wish I could tell of that visit of our gang of Quaker
City Vandals to the grandest monarch of the age,
America's stanch, old steadfast friend, Alexander II,
Autocrat of Russia!

In closing these remarks I will observe that I
could have said more about the American Vandal
abroad, and less about other things, but I found that
he had too many disagreeable points about him, and
so I thought I would touch him lightly and let
him go.

If there is a moral to this lecture it is an injunction
to all Vandals to travel. I am glad the American
Vandal goes abroad. It does him good. It makes a
better man of him. It rubs out a multitude of his
old unworthy biases and prejudices. It aids his
religion, for it enlarges his charity and his benov-
olence, it broadens his views of men and things; it
deepens his generosity and his compassion for the
failings and shortcomings of his fellow creatures.
Contact with men of various nations and many
creeds teaches him that there are other people in the
world besides his own little clique, and other opinions
as worthy of attention and respect as his own. He
finds that he and his are not the most momentous
matters in the universe. Cast into trouble and mis-
fortune in strange lands and being mercifully cared
for by those he never saw before, he begins to learn
that best lesson of all — that one which culminates in

29

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

the conviction that God puts something good and
something lovable in every man his hands create —
that the world is not a cold, harsh, cruel, prison^
house, stocked with all manner of selfishness and
hate and wickedness. It liberalizes the Vandal to
travel. You never saw a bigoted, opinionated, stub-
born, narrow-minded, self-conceited, almighty mean
man in your life but he had stuck in one place ever
since he was born and thought God made the world
and dyspepsia and bile for his especial comfort and
satisfaction. So I say, by all means let the American
Vandal go on traveling, and let no man discourage
him.

30

WOMAN— AN OPINION

Address at an Early Banquet of the Washington Corre-
spondents' Club

The twelfth toast was as follows: "Women — The pride of any
profession, and the jewel of ours. 1 *

MR. PRESIDENT,— I do not know why I
should be singled out to receive the greatest
distinction of the evening — for so the office of reply-
ing to the toast of woman has been regarded in every
age. I do not know why I have received this dis-
tinction, unless it be that I am a trifle less homely
than the other members of the club. But be this as
it may, Mr. President, I am proud of the position,
and you could not have chosen anyone who would
have accepted it more gladly, or labored with a
heartier good-will to do the subject justice than I —
because, sir, I love the sex. I love all the women,
irrespective of age or color.

Human intellect cannot estimate what we owe to
woman, sir. She sews on our buttons; she mends
our clothes; she ropes us in at the church fairs; she
confides in us; she tells us whatever she can find
out about the little private affairs of the neighbors;
she gives us good advice, and plenty of it; she
soothes our aching brows; she bears our children —
ours as a general thing. In all relations of life, sir,

3i

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

it is but a just and graceful tribute to woman to say
of her that she is a brick.

Wheresoever you place woman, sir — in whatever
position or estate — she is an ornament to the place
she occupies, and a treasure to the world. [Here Mr.
Clemens paused, looked inquiringly at his hearers,
and remarked that the applause should come in at
this point. It came in. He resumed his eulogy.]
Look at Cleopatra! — look at Desdemona! — look at
Florence Nightingale ! — look at Joan of Arc ! — look at
Lucretia Borgia! [Disapprobation expressed.] Well
[said Mr. Clemens, scratching his head, doubtfully],
suppose we let Lucretia slide. Look at Joyce Heth ! —
look at Mother Eve ! You need not look at her unless
you want to, but [said Mr. Clemens, reflectively, after
a pause] Eve was ornamental, sir — particularly before
the fashions changed. I repeat, sir, look at the
illustrious names of history. Look at the Widow
Machree! — look at Lucy Stone! — look at Elizabeth
Cady Stanton ! — look at George Francis Train ! And,
sir, I say it with bowed head and deepest veneration
— look at the mother of Washington! She raised a
boy that could not tell a lie — could not tell a lie!
But he never had any chance. It might have been
different if he had belonged to the Washington News-
paper Correspondents' Club.

I repeat, sir, that in whatever position you place a
woman she is an ornament to society and a treasure to
the world. As a sweetheart, she has few equals and no
superiors ; as a cousin, she is convenient ; as a wealthy
grandmother with an incurable distemper, she is
precious ; as a wet-nurse, she has no equal among men.

32

WOMAN— AN OPINION

What, sir, would the people of the earth be with-
out woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty
scarce. Then let us cherish her; let us protect her;
let us give her our support, our encouragement, our
sympathy, ourselves — if we get a chance.

But, jesting aside, Mr. President, woman is lov-
able, gracious, kind of heart, beautiful — worthy of
all respect, of all esteem, of all deference. Not any
here will refuse to drink her health right cordially in
this bumper of wine, for each and every one has
personally known and loved, and honored the very
best one of them all — his own mother.

33

AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH

Address tor a Gathering of Americans in London,
July 4, 1872

MR. CHAIRMAN AND LADIES AND GEN-
TLEMEN,— I thank you for the compliment
which has just been tendered me, and to show my
appreciation of it I will not afflict you with many
words. It is pleasant to celebrate in this peaceful
way, upon this old mother soil, the anniversary of an
experiment which was born of war with this same land
so long ago, and wrought out to a successful issue by
the devotion of our ancestors. It has taken nearly a
hundred years to bring the English and Americans into
kindly and mutually appreciative relations, but I be-
lieve it has been accomplished at last. It was a great
step when the two last misunderstandings were settled
by arbitration instead of cannon. It is another great
step when England adopts our sewing machines with-
out claiming the invention — as usual. It was another
when they imported one of our sleeping cars the other
day. And it warmed my heart more than I can tell,
yesterday, when I witnessed the spectacle of an Eng-
lishman ordering an American sherry cobbler of his own
free will and accord — and not only that, but with a
great brain and a level head reminding the barkeeper
not to forget the strawberries. With a common
origin, a common language, a common literature, a

34

AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH

common religion, and — common drinks, what is
longer needful to the cementing of the two nations
together in a permanent bond of brotherhood ?

This is an age of progress, and ours is a progressive
land. A great and glorious land, too — a land which has
developed a Washington, a Franklin, a William M.
Tweed, a Longfellow, a Motley, a Jay Gould, a Samuel
C. Pomeroy, a recent Congress which has never had
its equal (in some respects) , and a United States Army
which conquered sixty Indians in eight months by
tiring them out — which is much better than uncivilized
slaughter, God knows. We have a criminal jury sys-
tem which is superior to any in the world ; and its effi-
ciency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve
men every day who don't know anything and can't
read. And I may observe that we have an insanity
plea that would have saved Cain. I think I can say,
and say with pride, that we have some legislatures
that bring higher prices than any in the world.

I refer with effusion to our railway system, which con-
sents to let us live, though it might do the opposite,
being our owners. It only destroyed three thousand
and seventy lives last year by collisions, and twenty-
seven thousand two hundred and sixty by running over
heedless and unnecessary people at crossings. The com-
panies seriously regretted the killing of these thirty
thousand people, and went so far as to pay for some of
them — voluntarily, of course, for the meanest of us
would not claim that we possess a court treacherous
enough to enforce a law against a railway company.
But, thank Heaven, the railway companies are gen-
erally disposed to do the right and kindly thing with-

35

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

out compulsion. I know of an instance which greatly
touched me at the time. After an accident the company
sent home the remains of a dear distant old relative
of mine in a basket, with the remark, "Please state
what figure you hold him at — and return the basket."
Now there couldn't be anything friendlier than that.
But I must not stand here and brag all night.
However, you won't mind a body bragging a little
about his country on the Fourth of July. It is a fair
and legitimate time to fly the eagle. I will say only one
more word of brag — and a hopeful one. It is this. We
have a form of government which gives each man a
fair chance and no favor. With us no individual is born
with a right to look down upon his neighbor and hold
him in contempt. Let such of us as are not dukes find
our consolation in that. And we may find hope for the
future in the fact that as unhappy as is the condition
of our political morality to-day, England has risen up
out of a far fouler since the days when Charles I. en-
nobled courtesans and all political places was a matter
of bargain and sale. There is hope for us yet.*

* At least the above is the speech which I was going to make, but
our minister, General Schenck, presided, and after the blessing,
got up and made a great, long, inconceivably dull harangue, and
wound up by saying that inasmuch as speech making did not seem
to exhilarate the guests much, all further oratory would be dispensed
with during the evening, and we could just sit and talk privately
to our elbow neighbors and have a good, sociable time. It is known
that in consequence of that remark forty-four perfected speeches
died in the womb. The depression, the gloom, the solemnity that
reigned over the banquet from that time forth will be a lasting
memory with many that were there. By that one thoughtless
remark General Schenck lost forty-four of the best friends he had
in England. More than one said that night: "And this is the sort
of person that is sent to represent us in a great sister empire!"

36

ABOUT LONDON

Address at a Dinner Given by the Savage Club, London,
September 28, 1872

Reported by Moncure D. Conway in the Cincinnati Commercial.

IT affords me sincere pleasure to meet this distin-
guished club, a club which has extended its hos-
pitalities and its cordial welcome to so many of my
countrymen. I hope [and here the speaker's voice
became low and fluttering] you will excuse these
clothes. I am going to the theater; that will explain
these clothes. I have other clothes than these.
Judging human nature by what I have seen of it,
I suppose that the customary thing for a stranger
to do when he stands here is to make a pun on the
name of this club, under the impression, of course,
that he is the first man that that idea has occurred
to. It is a credit to our human nature, not a blemish
upon it; for it shows that underlying all our deprav-
ity (and God knows and you know we are depraved
enough) and all our sophistication, and untarnished
by them, there is a sweet germ of innocence and
simplicity still. When a stranger says to me, with
a glow of inspiration in his eye, some gentle, innoc-
uous little thing about "Twain and one flesh," and
all that sort of thing, I don't try to crush that man
into the earth — no. I feel like saying : ' ' Let me take
you by the hand, sir; let me embrace you; I have

37

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

not heard that pun for weeks.' ' We will deal in
palpable puns. We will call parties named King
"Your Majesty," and we will say to the Smiths
that we think we have heard that name before some-
where. Such is human nature. We cannot alter
this. It is God that made us so for some good and
wise purpose. Let us not repine. But though I may
seem strange, may seem eccentric, I mean to refrain
from punning upon the name of this club, though I
could make a very good one if I had time to think
about it — a week.

I cannot express to you what entire enjoyment I
find in this first visit to this prodigious metropolis
of yours. Its wonders seem to me to be limitless. I
go about as in a dream — as in a realm of enchant-
ment — wliere many things are rare and beautiful,
and all things are strange and marvelous. Hour
after hour I stand — I stand spellbound, as it were —
and gaze upon the statuary in Leicester Square.
[Leicester Square being a horrible chaos, with the
relic of an equestrian statue in the center, the king
being headless and limbless, and the horse in little
better condition.] I visit the mortuary effigies of
noble old Henry VIII. , and Judge Jeffreys, and the
preserved gorilla, and try to make up my mind
which of my ancestors I admire the most. I go to
that matchless Hyde Park and drive all around it,
and then I start to enter it at the Marble Arch —
and — am induced to "change my mind." [Cabs are
not permitted in Hyde Park — nothing less aristo-
cratic than a private carriage.] It is a great benefac-
tion — is Hyde Park. There, in his hansom cab, the

38

ABOUT LONDON

invalid can go — the poor, sad child of misfortune —
and insert his nose between the railings, and breathe
the pure, health-giving air of the country and of
heaven. And if he is a swell invalid, who isn't
obliged to depend upon parks for his country air,
he can drive inside — if he owns his vehicle. I drive
round and round Hyde Park, and the more I see of
the edges of it the more grateful I am that the margin
is extensive.

And I have been to the Zoological Gardens. What
a wonderful place that is ! I never have seen such a
curious and interesting variety of wild animals in
any garden before — except "Mabille." I never
believed before there were so many different kinds
of animals in the world as you can find there — and
I don't believe it yet. I have been to the British
Museum. I would advise you to drop in there some
time when you have nothing to do for — five minutes
— if you have never been there. It seems to me the
noblest monument that this nation has yet erected
to her greatness. I say to her, our greatness — as a
nation. True, she has built other monuments, and
stately ones, as well; but these she has uplifted in
honor of two or three colossal demigods who have
stalked across the world's stage, destroying tyrants
and delivering nations, and whose prodigies will still
live in the memories of men ages after their monu-
ments shall have crumbled to dust — I refer to the
Wellington and Nelson monuments, and — the Albert
memorial.

The library at the British Museum I find partic-
ularly astounding. I have read there hours together,

39

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

and hardly made an impression on it. I revere that
library. It is the author's friend. I don't care how
mean a book is, it always takes one copy. [A copy
of every book printed in Great Britain must by law
be sent to the British Museum, a law much com-
plained of by publishers.] And then every day that
author goes there to gaze at that book, and is encour-
aged to go on in the good work. And what a touch-
ing sight it is of a Saturday afternoon to see the poor,
careworn clergymen gathered together in that vast
reading-room cabbaging sermons for Sunday. You
will pardon my referring to these things. Every-
thing in this monster city interests me, and I cannot
keep from talking, even at the risk of being instruc-
tive. People here seem always to express distance
by parables. To a stranger it is just a little confusing
to be so parabolic — so to speak. I collar a citizen,
and I think I am going to get some valuable infor-
mation out of him. I ask him how far it is to
Birmingham, and he says it is twenty-one shillings
and sixpence. Now we know that doesn't help a
man who is trying to learn. I find myself down-
town somewhere, and I want to get some sort of idea
where I am — being usually lost when alone — and I
stop a citizen and say: "How far is it to Charing
Cross?" "Shilling fare in a cab," and off he goes.
I suppose if I were to ask a Londoner how far it is
from the sublime to the ridiculous, he would try to
express it in coin. But I am trespassing upon your
time with these geological statistics and historical
reflections. I will not longer keep you from your
orgies. 'Tis a real pleasure for me to be here, and I

40

ABOUT LONDON

thank you for it. The name of the Savage Club is
associated in my mind with the kindly interest and
the friendly offices which you lavished upon an old
friend of mine who came among you a stranger, and
you opened your English hearts to him and gave
him welcome and a home — Art emus Ward. Asking
that you will join me, I give you his memory.

41

THE LADIES

Delivered at the Anniversary Festival, 1872, of the
Scottish Corporation of London

Mr. Clemens replied to the toast " The Ladies."

I AM proud, indeed, of the distinction of being
chosen to respond to this especial toast to "The
Ladies," or to women if you please, for that is the
preferable term, perhaps; it is certainly the older,
and therefore the more entitled to reverence. I have
noticed that the Bible, with that plain, blunt honesty
which is such a conspicuous characteristic of the
Scriptures, is always particular to never refer to even
the illustrious mother of all mankind as a "lady,"
but speaks of her as a woman. It is odd, but you
will find it is so. I am peculiarly proud of this honor,
because I think that the toast to women is one which,
by right and by every rule of gallantry, should take
precedence of all others — of the army, of the navy,
of even royalty itself — perhaps, though the latter is
not necessary in this day and in this land, for the
reason that, tacitly, you do drink a broad general
health to all good women when you drink the health
of the Queen of England and the Princess of Wales.
I have in mind a poem just now which is familiar to
you all, familiar to everybody. And what an inspi-
ration that was, and how instantly the present toast
recalls the verses to all our minds when the most

42

THE LADIES

noble, the most gracious, the purest, and sweetest of
all poets says :

"Woman! O woman! er

Worn "

However, you remember the lines ; and you remem-
ber how feeling, how dainty, how almost imper-
ceptibly the verses raise up before you, feature by
feature, the ideal of a true and perfect woman, and
how, as you contemplate the finished marvel, your
homage grows into worship of the intellect that
could create so fair a thing out of mere breath, mere
words. And you call to mind now, as I speak, how
the poet, with stern fidelity to the history of all
humanity, delivers this beautiful child of his heart
and his brain over to the trials and sorrows that
must come to all, sooner or later, that abide in the
earth, and how the pathetic story culminates in that
apostrophe — so wild, so regretful, so full of mournful
retrospection. The lines run thus :

"Alas ! — alas ! — a — alas !
Alas! alas!"

— and so on. I do not remember the rest ; but, taken
together, it seems to me that poem is the noblest
tribute to woman that human genius has ever brought
forth — and I feel that if I were to talk hours I could
not do my great theme completer or more graceful
justice than I have now done in simply quoting that
poet's matchless words. The phases of the womanly
nature are infinite in their variety. Take any type
of woman, and you shall find in it something to
respect, something to admire, something to love.

43

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

Ar.£ ;.-:•.: s'zii'. Zjzz :r.e ~h:'e ; rising v:u bear: i:.:

wave :: rr.e: n^zz :ver
a: .'."i:er::c. .'.""-: f:e:
bare;:.: :ae ;~'ee: ;.
c:es r.:: ms.s :r.e g-e-tle

ir-f-uer.:-r:5 :.be hjmle

au

ta

c:
c:

W

::
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THE LADIES

will not call the mighty roll, the names rise up in
your own memories at the mere suggestion, luminous
with the glory of deeds that cannot die, hallowed by
the loving worship of the good and the true of all
epochs and all climes. Suffice it for our pride and
our honor that we in our day have added to it such
names as those of Grace Darling and Florence Night-
ingale. Woman is all that she should be — gentle,
patient, long-suffering, trustful, unselfish, full of gen-
erous impulses. It is her blessed mission to comfort
the sorrowing, plead for the erring, encourage the
faint of purpose, succor the distressed, uplift the
fallen, befriend the friendless — in a word, afford the
healing of her sympathies and a home in her heart
for all the bruised and persecuted children of mis-
fortune that knock at its hospitable door. And when
I say, God bless her, there is none among us who has
known the ennobling affection of a wife, or the stead-
fast devotion of a mother but in his heart will say,
Amenl

AS

LICENSE OP THE PRESS

In a talk before the Monday Evening Club of Hartford, in 1873,
Mark Twain set forth with some vigor Newspaper Sins and omis*
sions incident to the period following the Civil War.

I

(First paragraph missing)

T (the press) has scoffed at religion till it has
made scoffing popular. It has defended
official criminals, on party pretexts, until it has created
a United States Senate whose members are incapable
of determining what crime against law and the dig-
nity of their own body is, they are so morally blind,
and it has made light of dishonesty till we have as
a result a Congress which contracts to work for a
certain sum and then deliberately steals additional
wages out of the public pocket and is pained and
surprised that anybody should worry about a little
thing like that.

I am putting all this odious state of things upon
the newspaper, and I believe it belongs there —
chiefly, at any rate. It is a free press — a press
that is more than free — a press which is licensed to
say any infamous thing it chooses about a private
or a public man, or advocate any outrageous doctrine
it pleases. It is tied in no way. The public opinion
which should hold it in bounds it has itself degraded
to its own level. There are laws to protect the free-
dom of the press's speech, but none that are worth

46

LICENSE OF THE PRESS

anything to protect the people from the press. A
libel suit simply brings the plaintiff before a vast
newspaper court to be tried before the law tries him,
and reviled and ridiculed without mercy. The touchy
Charles Reade can sue English newspapers and get
verdicts; he would soon change his tactics here:
the papers (backed by a public well taught by them-
selves) would soon teach him that it is better to suffer
any amount of misrepresentation than go into our
courts with a libel suit and make himself the laugh-
ing stock of the community.

It seems to me that just in the ratio that our news-
papers increase, our morals decay. The more news-
papers the worse morals. Where we have one
newspaper that does good, I think we have fifty
that do harm. We ought to look upon the estab-
lishment of a newspaper of the average pattern in
a virtuous village as a calamity.

The difference between the tone and conduct of
newspapers to-day and those of thirty or forty years
ago is very noteworthy and very sad — I mean the
average newspaper (for they had bad ones then,
too). In those days the average newspaper was the
champion of right and morals, and it dealt conscien-
tiously in the truth. It is not the case now. The
other day a reputable New York daily had an edi-
torial defending the salary steal and justifying it on
the ground that Congressmen were not paid enough
— as if that were an all-sufficient excuse for stealing.
That editorial put the matter in a new and perfectly
satisfactory light with many a leather-headed reader,
without a doubt. It has become a sarcastic proverb

47

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

that a thing must be true if you saw it in a news-
paper. That is the opinion intelligent people have
of that lying vehicle in a nutshell. But the trouble
is that the stupid people — who constitute the grand
overwhelming majority of this and all other nations
— do believe and are moulded and convinced by
what they get out of a newspaper, and there is
where the harm lies.

Among us, the newspaper is a tremendous power.
It can make or mar any man's reputation. It
has perfect freedom to call the best man in the
land a fraud and a thief, and he is destroyed
beyond help. Whether Mr. Colfax is a liar or
not can never be ascertained now — but he will rank
as one till the day of his death — for the news-
papers have so doomed him. Our newspapers —
all of them, without exception — glorify the "Black
Crook" and make it an opulent success — they could
have killed it dead with one broadside of contemp-
tuous silence if they had wanted to. Days Doings
and Police Gazettes flourish in the land unmolested
by the law, because the virtuous newspapers long ago
nurtured up a public laxity that loves indecency and
never cares whether laws are administered or not.

In the newspapers of the West you can use the
editorial voice in the editorial columns to defend any
wretched and injurious dogma you please by paying
a dollar a line for it.

Nearly all newspapers foster Rozensweigs and
kindred criminals and send victims to them by open-
ing their columns to their advertisements. You all
know that.

48

LICENSE OF THE PRESS

In the Foster murder case the New York papers
made a weak pretense of upholding the hands of the
Governor and urging the people to sustain him in
standing firmly by the law; but they printed a
whole page of sickly, maudlin appeals to his clemency
as a paid advertisement. And I suppose they would
have published enough pages of abuse of the Gov-
ernor to destroy his efficiency as a public official to
the end of his term if anybody had come forward and
paid them for it — as an advertisement. The news-
paper that obstructs the law on a trivial pretext, for
money's sake, is a dangerous enemy to the public
weal.

That awful power, the public opinion of a nation,
is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-
complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and
shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on theif
way to the poorhouse. I am personally acquainted
with hundreds of journalists, and the opinion of the
majority of them would not be worth tuppence in
private, but when they speak in print it is the
newspaper that is talking (the pygmy scribe is not
visible) and then their utterances shake the com-
munity like the thunders of prophecy.

I know from personal experience the proneness of
journalists to lie. I once started a peculiar and
picturesque fashion of lying myself on the Pacific
coast, and it is not dead there to this day. Whenever
I hear of a shower of blood and frogs combined, in
California, or a sea serpent found in some desert,
there, or a cave frescoed with diamonds and emeralds
(always found by an Injun who died before he could

49

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

finish telling where it was), I say to myself I am the
father of this child — I have got to answer for this
lie. And habit is everything — to this day I am
liable to lie if I don't watch all the time.

The license of the press has scorched every indi-
vidual of us in our time, I make no doubt. Poor
Stanley was a very god, in England, his praises in
every man's mouth. But nobody said anything
about his lectures — they were charitably quiet on
that head, and were content to praise his higher
virtues. But our papers tore the poor creature limb
from limb and scattered the fragments from Maine
to California — merely because he couldn't lecture
well. His prodigious achievement in Africa goes for
naught — the man is pulled down and utterly
destroyed — but still the persecution follows him as
relentlessly from city to city and from village to
village as if he had committed some bloody and
detestable crime. Bret Harte was suddenly snatched
out of obscurity by our papers and throned in the
clouds — all the editors in the land stood out in the
inclement weather and adored him through their
telescopes and swung their hats till they wore them
out and then borrowed more; and the first time his
family fell sick, and in his trouble and harassment
he ground out a rather flat article in place of another
heathen Chinee, that hurrahing host said, "Why,
this man's a fraud," and then they began to reach up
there for him. And they got him, too, and fetched
him down, and walked over him, and rolled him in
the mud, and tarred and feathered him, and then
set him up for a target and have been heaving dirt

50

LICENSE OF THE PRESS

at him ever since. The result is that the man has
had only just nineteen engagements to lecture this
year, and the audience have been so scattering, too,
that he has never discharged a sentence yet that hit
two people at the same time. The man is ruined —
never can get up again. And yet he is a person who
has great capabilities, and might have accomplished
great things for our literature and for himself if he
had had a happier chance. And he made the mis-
take, too, of doing a pecuniary kindness for a starv-
ing beggar of our guild — one of the journalistic shoe-
maker class — and that beggar made it his business
as soon as he got back to San Francisco to publish
four columns of exposures of crimes committed by
his benefactor, the least of which ought to make any
decent man blush. The press that admitted that
stuff to its columns had too much license.

In a town in Michigan I declined to dine with an
editor who was drunk, and he said, in his paper,
that my lecture was profane, indecent, and calcu-
lated to encourage intemperance. And yet that man
never heard it. It might have reformed him if he had.

A Detroit paper once said that I was in the con-
stant habit of beating my wife and that I still kept
this recreation up, although I had crippled her for
life and she was no longer able to keep out of my
way when I came home in my usual frantic frame of
mind. Now scarcely the half of that was true.
Perhaps I ought to have sued that man for libel —
but I knew better. All the papers in America — with
a few creditable exceptions — would have found out
then, to their satisfaction, that I was a wife beater,

Si

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

and they would have given it a pretty general
airing, too.

Why I have published vicious libels upon people
myself — and ought to have been hanged before my
time for it, too — if I do say it myself, that shouldn't.

But I will not continue these remarks. I have a
sort of vague general idea that there is too much
liberty of the press in this country, and that through
the absence of all wholesome restraint the newspaper
has become in a large degree a national curse, and
will probably damn the Republic yet.

There are some excellent virtues in newspapers,
some powers that wield vast influences for good;
and I could have told all about these things, and
glorified them exhaustively — but that would have
left you gentlemen nothing to say.

THE WEATHER

Address at the New England Society's Seventy-first
Annual Dinner, New York City

The next toast was: "The Oldest Inhabitant— The Weather oj
New England."

Who can lose it and forget it?
Who can have and regret it?

"Be interposer 'twixt us Twain."

— Merchant of Venice.

I REVERENTLY believe that the Maker who
made us all makes everything in New England
but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but
I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-
clerk's factory who experiment and learn how, in
New England, for board and clothes, and then are
promoted to make weather for countries that require
a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere
if they don't get it. There is a sumptuous variety
about the New England weather that compels the
stranger's admiration — and regret. The weather is
always doing something there; always attending
strictly to business; always getting up new designs
and trying them on the people to see how they will
go. But it gets through more business in spring
than in any other season. In the spring I have
counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds
of weather inside of four-and-twenty hours. It was

S3

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

I that made the fame and fortune of that man who
had that marvelous collection of weather on exhibi-
tion at the Centennial, which so astounded the for-
eigners. He was going to travel all over the world
and get specimens from all the climes. I said, * ' Don't
you do it ; you come to New England on a favorable
spring day." I told him what we could do in the
way of style, variety, and quantity. Well, he came
and he made his collection in four days. As to
variety, why, he confessed that he got hundreds of
kinds of weather that he had never heard of before.
And as to quantity^— well, after he had picked out
and discarded all that was blemished in any way,
he not only had weather enough, but weather to
spare; weather to hire out; weather to sell; to
deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to the
poor. The people of New England are by nature
patient and forbearing, but there are some things
which they will not stand. Every year they kill a
lot of poets for writing about "Beautiful Spring."
These are generally casual visitors, who bring their
notions of spring from somewhere else, and cannot,
of course, know how the natives feel about spring.
And so the first thing they know the opportunity
to inquire how they feel has permanently gone by.
Old Probabilities has a mighty reputation for accurate
prophecy, and thoroughly well deserves it. You take
up the paper and observe how crisply and confidently
he checks off what to-day's weather is going to be on
the Pacific, down South, in the Middle States, in the
Wisconsin region. See him sail along in the joy and
pride of his power till he gets to New England, and

54

THE WEATHER

see his tail drop. He doesn't know what the weather
is going to be in New England. Well, he mulls over
it, and by and by he gets out something about like
this: Probably northeast to southwest winds, vary-
ing to the southward and westward and eastward,
and points between, high and low barometer swap-
ping around from place to place; probable areas of
rain, snow, hail, and drought, succeeded or preceded
by earthquakes, with thunder and lightning. Then
he jots down a postscript from his wandering mind,
to cover accidents. "But it is possible that the
programme may be wholly changed in the mean-
time." Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New
England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it.
There is only one thing certain about it: you are
certain there is going to be plenty of it — a perfect
grand review; but you never can tell which end of
the procession is going to move first. You fix up
for the drought; you leave your umbrella in the
house and sally out, and two to one you get drowned.
You make up your mind that the earthquake is due;
you stand from under, and take hold of something
to steady yourself, and the first thing you know you
get struck by lightning. These are great disappoint-
ments; but they can't be helped. The lightning
there is peculiar; it is so convincing, that when it
strikes a thing it doesn't leave enough of that thing
behind for you to tell whether — Well, you'd think
it was something valuable, and a Congressman had
been there. And the thunder. When the thunder
begins to merely tune up and scrape and saw, and
key up the instruments for the performance, strangers

55

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

say, "Why, what awful thunder you have here!"
But when the baton is raised and the real concert
begins, you'll find that stranger down in the cellar
with his head in the ash-barrel. Now as to the size
of the weather in New England — lengthways, I
mean. It is utterly disproportioned to the size of
that little country. Half the time, when it is packed
as full as it can stick, you will see that New England
weather sticking out beyond the edges and projecting
around hundreds and hundreds of miles over the
neighboring States. She can't hold a tenth part of
her weather. You can see cracks all about where
she has strained herself trying to do it. I could
speak volumes about the inhuman perversity of the
New England weather, but I will give but a single
specimen. I like to hear rain on a tin roof. So I
covered part of my roof with tin, with an eye to that
luxury. Well, sir, do you think it ever rains on that
tin? No, sir; skips it every time. Mind, in this
speech I have been trying merely to do honor to the
New England weather — no language could do it jus-
tice. But, after all , there is at least one or two things
about that weather (or, if you please, effects produced
by it) which we residents would not like to part with.
If we hadn't our bewitching autumn foliage, we
should still have to credit the weather with one
feature which compensates for all its bullying vaga-
ries — the ice storm: when a leafless tree is clothed
with ice from the bottom to the top — ice that is as
bright and clear as crystal; when every bough and
twig is strung with ice beads, frozen dew drops, and
the whole tree sparkles cold and white like the Shah

56

THE WEATHER

of Persia's diamond plume. Then the wind waves
the branches and the sun comes out and turns all
those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that
glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored
fires, which change and change again with incon-
ceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green,
and green to gold — the tree becomes a spraying foun-
tain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it
stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest
possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxi-
cating, intolerable magnificence. One cannot make
the words too strong.

57

THE BABIES

Delivered at the Banquet, in Chicago, Given by the

Army of the Tennessee to Their First Commander,

General U. S. Grant, November, 1879 l

The fifteenth regular toast was "The Babies. — As they comfort
us in our sorrows, let us not forget them in our festivities"

I LIKE that. We have not all had the good for-
tune to be ladies. We have not all been generals,
or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works
down to the babies, we stand on common ground.
It is a shame that for a thousand years the world's
banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as if he
didn't amount to anything. If you will stop and
think a minute — if you will go back fifty or one
hundred years to your early married life and recon-
template your first baby — you will remember that
he amounted to a good deal, and even something
over. You soldiers all know that when that little
fellow arrived at family headquarters you had to
hand in your resignation. He took entire command.
You became his lackey, his mere body-servant, and
you had to stand around, too. He was not a com-
mander who made allowances for time, distance,
weather, or anything else. You had to execute his
order whether it was possible or not. And there

1 The story of the delivery of this speech may be found in Chap-
ter CXXIII of Mark Twain — A Biography.

58

THE BABIES

was only one form of marching in his manual of
tactics, and that was the double-quick. He treated
you with every sort of insolence and disrespect, and
the bravest of you didn't dare to say a word. You
could face the death storm at Donelson and Vicks-
burg, and give back blow for blow; but when he
clawed your whiskers, and pulled your hair, and
twisted your nose, you had to take it. When the
thunders of war were sounding in your ears you set
your faces toward the batteries, and advanced with
steady tread; but when he turned on the terrors of
his war-whoop you advanced in the other direction,
and mighty glad of the chance, too. When he called
for soothing-syrup, did you venture to throw out any
side-remarks about certain services being unbecom-
ing an officer and a gentleman? No. You got up
and got it. When he ordered his pap bottle and it
was not warm, did you talk back? Not you. You
went to work and warmed it. You even descended
so far in your menial office as to take a suck at that
warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see if it was right —
three parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to
modify the colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill
those immortal hiccoughs. I can taste that stuff
yet. And how many things you learned as you went
along! Sentimental young folks still take stock in
that beautiful old saying that when the baby smiles
in his sleep, it is because the angels are whispering
to him. Very pretty, but too thin — simply wind on
the stomach, my friend. If the baby proposed to
take a walk at his usual hour, two o'clock in the
morning, didn't you rise up promptly and remark,

59

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

with a mental addition which would not improve a
Sunday-school book much, that that was the very
thing you were about to propose yourself? Oh! you
were under good discipline, and as you went flutter-
ing up and down the room in your undress uniform,
you not only prattled undignified baby talk, but
even tuned up your martial voices and tried to
sing! — Rock-a-by Baby in the Tree-top, for instance.
What a spectacle for an Army of the Tennessee!
And what an affliction for the neighbors, too; for
it is not everybody within a mile around that likes
military music at three in the morning. And when
you had been keeping this sort of thing up two or
three hours, and your little velvet-head intimated that
nothing suited him like exercise and noise, what did
you do? You simply went on until you dropped in
the last ditch. The idea that a baby doesn't amount
to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a
front yard full by itself. One baby can furnish more
business than you and your whole Interior Depart-
ment can attend to. He is enterprising, irrepressible,
brimful of lawless activities. Do what you please,
you can't make him stay on the reservation. Suf-
ficient unto the day is one baby. As long as you
are in your right mind don't you ever pray for
twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot. And there
ain't any real difference between triplets and an
insurrection.

Yes, it was high time for a toastmaster to recog-
nize the importance of the babies. Think what is in
store for the present crop ! Fifty years from now we
shall all be dead, I trust, and then this flag, if it still

60

THE BABIES

survive (and let us hope it may), will be floating
over a Republic numbering 200,000,000 souls, accord-
ing to the settled laws of our increase. Our present
schooner of State will have grown into a political
leviathan — a Great Eastern. The cradled babies of
to-day will be on deck. Let them be well trained,
for we are going to leave a big contract on their
hands. Among the three or four million cradles
now rocking in the land are some which this nation
would preserve for ages as sacred things, if we could
know which ones they are. In one of these cradles
the unconscious Farragut of the future is at this
moment teething — think of it! — and putting in a
world of dead earnest, unarticulated, but perfectly
justifiable profanity over it, too. In another the
future renowned astronomer is blinking at the shin-
ing Milky Way with but a languid interest — poor
little chap! — and wondering what has become of
that other one they call the wet-nurse. In another
the future great historian is lying — and doubtless
will continue to lie until his earthly mission is ended.
In another the future President is busying himself
with no profounder problem of state than what the
mischief has become of his hair so early; and in a
mighty array of other cradles there are now some
60,000 future office-seekers, getting ready to furnish
him occasion to grapple with that same old problem a
second time. And in still one more cradle, somewhere
under the flag, the future illustrious commander-in-
chief of the American armies is so little burdened
with his approaching grandeurs and responsibilities
as to be giving his whole strategic mind at this

61

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

moment to trying to find out some way to get
his big toe into his mouth — an achievement which,
meaning no disrespect, the illustrious guest of this
evening turned his entire attention to some fifty-six
years ago; and if the child is but a prophecy of the
man, there are mighty few who will doubt that he
succeeded.

62

THE STORY OF A SPEECH

An address delivered in 1877, and a review of it twenty-nine
years later. The original speech was delivered at a dinner given
by the publishers of The Atlantic Monthly in honor of the seventieth
anniversary of the birth of John Greenleaf Whittier, at the Hotel
Brunswick, Boston, December 17, 1877.

The Speech

THIS is an occasion peculiarly meet for the dig-
ging up of pleasant reminiscences concerning
literary folk; therefore I will drop lightly into his-
tory myself. Standing here on the shore of the
Atlantic and contemplating certain of its largest
literary billows, I am reminded of a thing which hap-
pened to me thirteen years ago, when I had just
succeeded in stirring up a little Nevadian literary-
puddle myself, whose spume-flakes were beginning
to blow thinly Californiaward. I started an inspec-
tion tramp through the southern mines of California.
I was callow and conceited, and I resolved to try the
virtue of my nom de guerre.

I very soon had an opportunity. I knocked at a
miner's lonely log cabin in the foot-hills of the
Sierras just at nightfall. It was snowing at the
time. A jaded, melancholy man of fifty, barefooted,
opened the door to me. When he heard my nom de
guerre he looked more dejected than before. He let
me in — pretty reluctantly, I thought — and after the

63

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

customary bacon and beans, black coffee and hot
whiskey, I took a pipe. This sorrowful man had not
said three words up to this time. Now he spoke up
and said, in the voice of one who is secretly suffering,
"You're the fourth— I'm going to move." "The
fourth what?" said I. "The fourth literary man
that has been here in twenty-four hours — I'm going
to move. " " You don't tell me ! " said I ; " who were
the others?" "Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Emerson, and
Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes — consound the lot!"

You can easily believe I was interested. I suppli-
cated — three hot whiskies did the rest — and finally
the melancholy miner began. Said he:

"They came here just at dark yesterday evening,
and I let them in, of course. Said they were going to
the Yosemite. They were a rough lot, but that's
nothing; everybody looks rough that travels afoot.
Mr. Emerson was a seedy little bit of a chap, red-
headed. Mr. Holmes was as fat as a balloon; he
weighed as much as three hundred, and had double
chins all the way down to his stomach. Mr. Long-
fellow was built like a prize-fighter. His head was
cropped and bristly, like as if he had a wig made of
hair-brushes. His nose lay straight down his face, like
a finger with the end joint tilted up. They had been
drinking, I could see that. And what queer talk
they used! Mr. Holmes inspected this cabin, then
he took me by the buttonhole, and says he:

"'Through the deep caves of thought
I hear a voice that sings,
Build thee more stately mansions,
O my soul!'

64

THE STORY OF A SPEECH

"Says I, 'I can't afford it, Mr. Holmes, and more-
over I don't want to.' Blamed if I liked it pretty-
well, either, coming from a stranger, that way. How-
ever, I started to get out my bacon and beans, when
Mr. Emerson came and looked on awhile, and then
he takes me aside by the buttonhole and says :

'"Gives me agates for my meat;
Gives me cantharids to eat;
From air and ocean bring me foods,
From all zones and altitudes.'

"Says I, 'Mr. Emerson, if you'll excuse me, this
ain't no hotel.' You see it sort of riled me — I warn't
used to the ways of littery swells. But I went on
a-sweating over my work, and next comes Mr. Long-
fellow and buttonholes me, and interrupts me.
Says he:

"'Honor be to Mudjekeewis!
You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis — '

"But I broke in, and says I, 'Beg your pardon,
Mr. Longfellow, if you'll be so kind as to hold your
yawp for about five minutes and let me get this
grub ready, you'll do me proud.' Well, sir, after
they'd filled up I set out the jug. Mr. Holmes looks
at it, and then he fires up all of sudden and yells:

'"Flash out a stream of blood-red wine!
For I would drink to other days/

"By George, I was getting kind of worked up. I

don't deny it, I was getting kind of worked up. I

turns to Mr. Holmes, and says I, 'Looky here, my

fat friend, I'm a-running this shanty, and if the

court knows herself, you'll take whisky straight or

you'll go dry.' Them's the very words I said to him.

65

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

Now I don't want to sass such famous littery people,
but you see they kind of forced me. There ain't
nothing onreasonable 'bout me; I don't mind a
passel of guests a-treadin' on my tail three or four
times, but when it comes to standing on it it's dif-
ferent, 'and if the court knows herself,' I says, 'you'll
take whisky straight or you'll go dry.' Well,
between drinks they'd swell around the cabin and
strike attitudes and spout; and pretty soon they
got out a greasy old deck and went to playing euchre
at ten cents a corner — on trust. I began to notice
some pretty suspicious things. Mr. Emerson dealt,
looked at his hand, shook his head, says:
"'I am the doubter and the doubt — '

and ca 'mly bunched the hands and went to shuffling
for a new layout. Says he:

"'They reckon ill who leave me out;
They know not well the subtle ways I keep
I pass and deal again! '

Hang'd if he didn't go ahead and do it, too! Oh, he
was a cool one ! Well, in about a minute things were
running pretty tight, but all of a sudden I see by
Mr. Emerson's eye he judged he had 'em. He had
already corralled two tricks, and each of the others
one. So now he kind of lifts a little in his chair and
says:

"'I tire of globes and aces! —
Too long the game is played!'

— and down he fetched a right bower. Mr. Long>
fellow smiles as sweet as pie and says :

Thanks thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught/
66

THE STORY OF A SPEECH

— and blamed if he didn't down with another right
bower ! Emerson claps his hand on his bowie, Long-
fellow claps his on his revolver, and I went under a
bunk. There was going to be trouble; but that
monstrous Holmes rose up, wobbling his double chins,
and says he, 'Order, gentlemen; the first man that
draws, I'll lay down on him and smother him!' All
quiet on the Potomac, you bet !

"They were pretty how-come-you-so by now, and
they begun to blow. Emerson says, 'The nobbiest
thing I ever wrote was "Barbara Frietchie."' Says
Longfellow, 'It don't begin with my "Biglow
Papers.'" Says Holmes, 'My "Thanatopsis" lays
over 'em both.' They mighty near ended in a fight.
Then they wished they had some more company —
and Mr. Emerson pointed to me and says:
'"Is yonder squalid peasant all

That this proud nursery could breed? '

He was a-whetting his bowie on his boot — so I let

it pass. Well, sir, next they took it into their heads

that they would like some music; so they made me

stand up and sing "When Johnny Comes Marching

Home" till I dropped — at thirteen minutes past four

this morning. That's what I've been through, my

friend. When I woke at seven, they were leaving,

thank goodness, and Mr. Longfellow had my only

boots on, and his'n under his arm. Says I, 'Hold on,

there, Evangeline, what are you going to do with them? '

He says, 'Going to make tracks with 'em; because:

"'Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime;
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.'

6 7

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

As I said, Mr. Twain, you are the fourth in twenty-
four hours — and I'm going to move; I ain't suited
to a littery atmosphere."

I said to the miner, ' ■ Why, my dear sir, these were not
the gracious singers to whom we and the world pay lov-
ing reverence and homage ; these were impostors. '

The miner investigated me with a calm eye for
awhile; then said he, "Ah! impostors, were they?
Are youV

I did not pursue the subject, and since then I have
not traveled on my nom de guerre enough to hurt.
Such was the reminiscence I was moved to contribute,
Mr. Chairman. In my enthusiasm I may have exag-
gerated the details a little, but you will easily forgive
me that fault, since I believe it is the first time I have
ever deflected from perpendicular fact on an occasion
like this.

The Story

January n, 1906.
Answer to a letter received this morning:

Dear Mrs. H., — I am forever your debtor for reminding me
of that curious passage in my life. During the first year or two
after it happened, I could not bear to think of it. My pain and
shame were so intense, and my sense of having been an imbecile
so settled, established and confirmed, that I drove the episode
entirely from my mind — and so all these twenty-eight or twenty-
nine years I have lived in the conviction that my performance
of that time was coarse, vulgar, and destitute of humor. But
your suggestion that you and your family found humor in it
twenty-eight years ago moved me to look into the matter. So
I commissioned a Boston typewriter to delve among the Boston
papers of that bygone time and send me a copy of it.

It came this morning, and if there is any vulgarity about it I
am not to discover it. If it isn't innocently and ridiculously
funny, I am no judge. I will see to it that you get a copy.

68

THE STORY OF A SPEECH

What I have said to Mrs. H. is true. I did suffer
during a year or two from the deep humiliations of
the episode. But at last, in 1888, in Venice, my wife
and I came across Mr. and Mrs. A. P. C, of Concord,
Massachusetts, and a friendship began then of the
sort which nothing but death terminates. The C.'s
were very bright people and in every way charming
and companionable. We were together a month or
two in Venice and several months in Rome, after-
ward, and one day that lamented break of mine was
mentioned. And when I was on the point of lather-
ing those people for bringing it to my mind when I
had gotten the memory of it almost squelched, I
perceived with joy that the C.'s were indignant about
the way that my performance had been received in
Boston. They poured out their opinions most freely
and frankly about the frosty attitude of the people
who were present at that performance, and about
the Boston newspapers for the position they had
taken in regard to the matter. That position was
that I had been irreverent beyond belief, beyond
imagination. Very well; I had accepted that as a
fact for a year or two, and had been thoroughly
miserable about it whenever I thought of it — which
was not frequently, if I could help it. Whenever I
thought of it I wondered how I ever could have been
inspired to do so unholy a thing. Well, the C.'s
comforted me, but they did not persuade me to con-
tinue to think about the unhappy episode. I resisted
that. I tried to get it out of my mind, and let it die,
and I succeeded. Until Mrs. H.'s letter came, it had
been a good twenty-five years since I had thought

69

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

of that matter; and when she said that the thing
was funny I wondered if possibly she might be right.
At any rate, my curiosity was aroused, and I wrote
to Boston and got the whole thing copied, as above
set forth.

I vaguely remembered some of the details of that
gathering — dimly I can see a hundred people — no,
perhaps fifty — shadowy figures sitting at tables feed-
ing, ghosts now to me, and nameless forevermore.
I don't know who they were, but I can very distinctly
see, seated at the grand table and facing the rest
of us, Mr. Emerson, supernaturally grave, unsmiling;
Mr. Whittier, grave, lovely, his beautiful spirit shin-
ing out of his face; Mr. Longfellow, with his silken
white hair and his benignant face; Dr. Oliver Wen-
dell Holmes, flashing smiles and affection and all
good-fellowship everywhere like a rose-diamond whose
facets are being turned toward the light first one way
and then another — a charming man, and always fas-
cinating, whether he was talking or whether he was
sitting still (what he would call still, but what would
be more or less motion to other people). I can see
those figures with entire distinctness across this abyss
of time.

One other feature is clear — Willie Winter (for these
past thousand years dramatic editor of the New York
Tribune, and still occupying that high post in his
old age) was there. He was much younger then than
he is now, and he showed it. It was always a pleasure
to me to see Willie Winter at a banquet. During a
matter of twenty years I was seldom at a banquet
where Willie Winter was not also present, and where

70

THE STORY OF A SPEECH

he did not read a charming poem written for the
occasion. He did it this time, and it was up to
standard: dainty, happy, choicely phrased, and as
good to listen to as music, and sounding exactly as
if it was pouring unprepared out of heart and brain.

Now at that point ends all that was pleasurable
about that notable celebration of Mr. Whittier's
seventieth birthday — because I got up at that point
and followed Winter, with what I have no doubt I
supposed would be the gem of the evening — the gay
oration above quoted from the Boston paper. I had
written it all out the day before and had perfectly
memorized it, and I stood up there at my genial and
happy and self-satisfied ease, and began to deliver
it. Those majestic guests, that row of venerable
and still active volcanoes, listened, as did everybody
else in the house, with attentive interest. Well, I
delivered myself of — we'll say the first two hundred
words of my speech. I was expecting no returns
from that part of the speech, but this was not the
case as regarded the rest of it. I arrived now at the
dialogue: "The old miner said, 'You are the fourth,
I'm going to move.' 'The fourth what?' said I. He
answered, 'The fourth littery man that has been here
in twenty-four hours. I am going to move.' 'Why,
you don't tell me,' said I. 'Who were the others?'
'Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Oliver Wendell
Holmes, consound the lot — '"

Now, then, the house's attention continued, but the
expression of interest in the faces turned to a sort
of black frost. I wondered what the trouble was.
I didn't know. I went on, but with difficulty — I

7i

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

struggled along, and entered upon that miner's fear-
ful description of the bogus Emerson, the bogus
Holmes, the bogus Longfellow, always hoping — but
with a gradually perishing hope — that somebody
would laugh, or that somebody would at least smile,
but nobody did. I didn't know enough to give it
up and sit down, I was too new to public speaking,
and so I went on with this awful performance, and
carried it clear through to the end, in front of a
body of people who seemed turned to stone with
horror. It was the sort of expression their faces
would have worn if I had been making these remarks
about the Deity and the rest of the Trinity; there
is no milder way in which to describe the petrified
condition and the ghastly expression of those people.
When I sat down it was with a heart which had
long ceased to beat. I shall never be as dead again
as I was then. I shall never be as miserable again
as I was then. I speak now as one who doesn't
know what the conditions of things may be in the
next world, but in this one I shall never be as
wretched again as I was then. Howells, who was
near me, tried to say a comforting word, but couldn't
get beyond a gasp. There was no use — he under-
stood the whole size of the disaster. He had good
intentions, but the words froze before they could get
out. It was an atmosphere that would freeze any-
thing. If Benvenuto Cellini's salamander had been
in that place he would not have survived to be put
into Cellini's autobiography. There was a frightful
pause. There was an awful silence, a desolating
silence. Then the next man on the list had to get

72

THE STORY OF A SPEECH

up — there was no help for it. That was Bishop —
Bishop had just burst handsomely upon the world
with a most acceptable novel, which had appeared in
The Atlantic Monthly, a place which would make any
novel respectable and any author noteworthy. In
this case the novel itself was recognized as being,
without extraneous help, respectable. Bishop was
away up in the public favor, and he was an object
of high interest, consequently there was a sort of
national expectancy in the air; we may say our
American millions were standing, from Maine to
Texas and from Alaska to Florida, holding their
breath, their lips parted, their hands ready to
applaud, when Bishop should get up on that
occasion, and for the first time in his life speak in
public. It was under these damaging conditions
that he got up to "make good," as the vulgar say.
I had spoken several times before, and that is the
reason why I was able to go on without dying in my
tracks, as I ought to have done — but Bishop had had
no experience. He was up facing those awful deities
— facing those other people, those strangers — facing
human beings for the first time in his life, with a
speech to utter. No doubt it was well packed away
in his memory, no doubt it was fresh and usable,
until I had been heard from. I suppose that after
that, and under the smothering pall of that dreary
silence, it began to waste away and disappear out
of his head like the rags breaking from the edge of
a fog, and presently there wasn't any fog left. He
didn't go on — he didn't last long. It was not many
sentences after his first before he began to hesitate,

73

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

and break, and lost his grip, and totter, and wobble,
and at last he slumped down in a limp and mushy
pile.

Well, the programme for the occasion was probably
not more than one- third finished, but it ended there.
Nobody rose. The next man hadn't strength enough
to get up, and everybody looked so dazed, so stupe-
fied, paralyzed, it was impossible for anybody to do
anything, or even try. Nothing could go on in that
strange atmosphere. Ho wells mournfully, and with-
out words, hitched himself to Bishop and me and
supported us out of the room. It was very kind — he
was most generous. He towed us tottering away
into some room in that building, and we sat down
there. I don't know what my remark was now, but
I know the nature of it. It was the kind of remark
you make when you know that nothing in the world
can help your case. But Howells was honest — he
had to say the heart-breaking things he did say:
that there was no help for this calamity, this ship-
wreck, this cataclysm; that this was the most
disastrous thing that had ever happened in anybody's
history — and then he added, ''That is, for you — and
consider what you have done for Bishop. It is bad
enough in your case, you deserve to suffer. You
have committed this crime, and you deserve to have
all you are going to get. But here is an innocent
man. Bishop had never done you any harm, and
see what you have done to him. He can never hold
his head up again. The world can never look upon
Bishop as being a live person. He is a corpse."

That is the history of that episode of twenty-eight

74

THE STORY OF A SPEECH

years ago, which pretty nearly killed me with shame
during that first year or two whenever it forced its
way into my mind.

Now then, I take that speech up and examine it.
As I said, it arrived this morning, from Boston. I
have read it twice, and unless I am an idiot, it
hasn't a single defect in it from the first word to
the last. It is just as good as good can be. It is
smart; it is saturated with humor. There isn't a
suggestion of coarseness or vulgarity in it anywhere.
What could have been the matter with that house?
It is amazing, it is incredible, that they didn't shout
with laughter, and those deities the loudest of them
all. Could the fault have been with me? Did I
lose courage when I saw those great men up there
whom I was going to describe in such a strange
fashion? If that happened, if I showed doubt, that
can account for it, for you can't be successfully
funny if you show that you are afraid of it. Well, I
can't account for it, but if I had those beloved and
revered old literary immortals back here now on the
platform at Carnegie Hall I would take that same
old speech, deliver it, word for word, and melt them
till they'd run all over that stage. Oh, the fault
must have been with me, it is not in the speech
ax all.

Yet, characteristically enough, Mark Twain had
quite another opinion of this unfortunate speech.
Reading it for the first time after the lapse of nearly
thirty years, he said: "I find it gross, coarse — well,

75

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

I needn't go into particulars. I don't like any part
of it, from beginning to end."

It was only on the second reading that the spirit
and delight of his old first conception returned,
causing him to completely reverse this opinion and
write the words of approval, as quoted. 1

1 For some further history of this curious episode the reader is
referred to Howell's "My Mark Twain" and to "Mark Twain — a
Biography" by A. B. Paine.

7 6

UNCONSCIOUS PLAGIARISM

Delivered at the Dinner Given by the Publishers or

"The Atlantic Monthly" to Oliver Wendell

Holmes, in Honor of His Seventieth

Birthday, August 29, 1879 l

I WOULD have traveled a much greater distance
than I have come to witness the paying of honors
to Doctor Holmes; for my feeling toward him has
always been one of peculiar warmth. When one
receives a letter from a great man for the first time
in his life, it is a large event to him, as all of you
know by your own experience. You never can receive
letters enough from famous men afterward to oblit-
erate that one, or dim the memory of the pleasant
surprise it was, and the gratification it gave you.
Lapse of time cannot make it commonplace or cheap.
Well, the first great man who ever wrote me a
letter was our guest — Oliver Wendell Holmes. He
was also the first great literary man I ever stole any-
thing from — and that is how I came to write to him
and he to me. When my first book was new, a friend
of mine said to me, ''The dedication is very neat."
Yes, I said, I thought it was. My friend said, "I
always admired it, even before I saw it in The
Innocents Abroad." I naturally said: "What do

1 This speech was felt to be in the nature of atonement for the
" Atlantic Birthday-dinner" speech of two years before.

77

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

you mean? Where did you ever see it before?"
"Well, I saw it first some years ago as Doctor
Holmes's dedication to his Songs in Many Keys"
Of course, my first impulse was to prepare this man's
remains for burial, but upon reflection I said I would
reprieve him for a moment or two and give him a
chance to prove his assertion if he could. We stepped
into a book-store, and he did prove it. I had really
stolen that dedication, almost word for word. I
could not imagine how this curious thing had hap-
pened ; for I knew one thing — that a certain amount
of pride always goes along with a teaspoonful of
brains, and that this pride protects a man from delib-
erately stealing other people's ideas. That is what
a teaspoonful of brains will do for a man — and
admirers had often told me I had nearly a basket-
ful — though they were rather reserved as to the size
of the basket.

However, I thought the thing out, and solved the
mystery. Two years before, I had been laid up a
couple of weeks in the Sandwich Islands, and had
read and re-read Doctor Holmes's poems till my men-
tal reservoir was filled up with them to the brim.
The dedication lay on the top, and handy, so, by
and by, I unconsciously stole it. Perhaps I uncon-
sciously stole the rest of the volume, too, for many
people have told me that my book was pretty poeti-
cal, in one way or another. Well, of course, I wrote
Doctor Holmes and told him I hadn't meant to
steal, and he wrote back and said in the kindest way
that it was all right and no harm done; and added
that he believed we all unconsciously worked over

78

UNCONSCIOUS PLAGIARISM

ideas gathered in reading and hearing, imagining
they were original with ourselves. He stated a truth,
and did it in such a pleasant way, and salved over
my sore spot so gently and so healingly, that I was
rather glad I had committed the crime, for the sake
of the letter. I afterward called on him and told
him to make perfectly free with any ideas of mine
that struck him as being good protoplasm for poetry.
He could see by that that there wasn't anything
mean about me; so we got along right from the
start. I have not met Doctor Holmes many times
since; and lately he said — However, I am wander-
ing wildly away from the one thing which I got on
my feet to do; that is, to make my compliments to
you, my fellow teachers of the great public, and like-
wise to say that I am right glad to see that Doctor
Holmes is still in his prime and full of generous life;
and as age is not determined by years, but by trouble
and infirmities of mind and body, I hope it may be a
very long time yet before any one can truthfully say,
"He is growing old."

79

ACCIDENT INSURANCE— ETC.

Delivered in Hartford, at a Dinner to Cornelius Wat-
ford, of London

GENTLEMEN,— I am glad, indeed, to assist in
welcoming the distinguished guest of this occa-
sion to a city whose fame as an insurance center has
extended to all lands, and given us the name of being
a quadruple band of brothers working sweetly hand
in hand — the Colt's arms company making the
destruction of our race easy and convenient, our life-
insurance citizens paying for the victims when they
pass away, Mr. Batterson perpetuating their memory
with his stately monuments, and our fire-insurance
comrades taking care of their hereafter. I am glad
to assist in welcoming our guest — first, because he
is an Englishman, and I owe a heavy debt of hospi-
tality to certain of his fellow-countrymen; and
secondly, because he is in sympathy with insurance,
and has been the means of making many other men
cast their sympathies in the same direction.

Certainly there is no nobler field for human effort
than the insurance line of business — especially acci-
dent insurance. Ever since I have been a director
in an accident-insurance company I have felt that I
am a better man. Life has seemed more precious.
Accidents have assumed a kindlier aspect. Dis-
tressing special providences have lost half their hor-

80

ACCIDENT INSURANCE— ETC.

ror. I look upon a cripple now with affectionate
interest — as an advertisement. I do not seem to
care for poetry any more. I do not care for politics
— even agriculture does not excite me. But to me
now there is a charm about a railway collision that
is unspeakable.

There is nothing more beneficent than accident
insurance. I have seen an entire family lifted out
of poverty and into affluence by the simple boon of a
broken leg. I have had people come to me on
crutches, with tears in their eyes, to bless this benefi-
cent institution. In all my experience of life, I
have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that comes
into a freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in
his vest pocket with his remaining hand and finds
his accident ticket all right. And I have seen noth-
ing so sad as the look that came into another
splintered customer's face when he found he couldn't
collect on a wooden leg.

I will remark here, by way of advertisement, that
that noble charity which we have named the Hart-
ford Accident Insurance Company* is an institu-
tion which is peculiarly to be depended upon. A
man is bound to prosper who gives it his custom.
No man can take out a policy in it and not get
crippled before the year is out. Now there was one
indigent man who had been disappointed so often
with other companies that he had grown disheartened,
his appetite left him, he ceased to smile — said life
was but a weariness. Three weeks ago I got him to
insure with us, and now he is the brightest, happiest

* The speaker was a director of the company named.

81

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

spirit in this land — has a good steady income and a
stylish suit of new bandages every day, and travels
around on a shutter.

I will say, in conclusion, that my share of the wel-
come to our guest is none the less hearty because I
talk so much nonsense, and I know that I can say
the same for the rest of the speakers.

82

ON AFTER-DINNER SPEAKING

At a Dinner to Monsieur Frechette or Quebec, 1880

I HAVE broken a vow in order that I might give
myself the pleasure of meeting my fnend Fre-
chette again. But that is nothing to brag about;
a person who is rightly constructed will break a vow
any time to meet a friend. Before I last met f Mon-
sieur Frechette, he had become the child of good
fortune-that is to say, his poems had been crowned
by the Academy of France; since I last met him he
has become the child of good fortune once more-
that is to say, I have translated his poems into
English and written a eulogy of them in the French
language to preface the work. H e possessed a sing e-
barrelled fame before; he will possess a double-
barrelled fame now. For this reason: translations
always reverse a thing and bring an entirely new
side of it into view, thus doubling the property and
making two things out of what was only one thing be-
fore So, in my translation his pathetic poems have nat-
urally become humorous, his humorous poems have
become sad. Anybody who knows even the rudiments
of arithmetic will know that Monsieur Frechettes
poems are now worth exactly twice as much as they
were before. I am glad to help welcome the laureate
of Quebec to our soil; and I assure him that we will do
our best to leave him no room to regret that he came.

83

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES
Yes, as I was saying, I broke a vow. If it had been
a tng, shiny brand-new one, I should be sony of
course, for lt is always wrong and a pity to Seat
and mjure good new property; but tlis was dtfereS

JZV T 6 ' ^ ° ne ' beCaUSe * was « old TragS
ramshaclde vow that had seen so much serviced

?rthSt n so so often ; and patched «^ss

2f , ? t many places ' that ^ ^s become a
disgraceful object, and so rotten that I eould n^
ven ture to put any strain worth mentioning uponTt
Tins vow was a vow which I first made eleven yea's
ago on a New-Year's Day that I would never mSe
another after-dinner speech as long as I lived T It
was as good a vow then as I ever saw; but I have
broken it in sjxty-four places, since, and mended it ™
fresh every New-Year's. Seven years ago I reformed

ZS?7f™ y: Imad — thatlwouldfS
upright life-meaning by that that I would nev^
deW another lecture. I believe I have nZZ
broken that one; I think I can be true to it always
and thus disprove the Rev. Petroleum V. Nasbv's
Bu?T h tha !," bUrglarS aDd IeCtUrers — -W''

stilt i ther V0 T has ^ been be >™ d -y

SJ^r' J have . al -^ been beyond its

tw fr reaS ° n 1S Simple: * Ues ^ the fact

that the average man likes to hear himself talk
when he is not under criticism. The very man who
queers at your after-dinner speech when! readl^

moved r m v gS ^^ W0Uld W been P^rfuUy
moved to make just as poor a one himself if he had
been present, with the encouraging champagne in
bun and the friendly, uncritical faces all abouf nim

Q ,

ON AFTER-DINNER SPEAKING

But that discourteous man doesn't do all the sneer-
ing that is done over your speech; no, he does only
a tenth of it — you do the other nine-tenths yourself.
Your little talk, which sounded so fine and warbly
and nice when you were delivering it in the mellow
light of the lamps and in an enchanted atmosphere
of applause and all-pervading good-fellowship, looks
miserably pale and vapid and lifeless in the cold
print of a damp newspaper next morning, with obit-
uaries and cast-iron politics all around it and the
hard gray light of day shining upon it and mocking
at it. You do not recognize the corpse. You wonder
if this is really that gay and handsome creature of
the evening before. You look him over and find he
certainly is those very remains. Then you want to
bury him. You wish you could bury him privately.

*S

PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS

Address at the First Annual Dinner, N. E. Society,
Philadelphia, December 22, 1881

On calling upon Mr. Clemens to make response, President
Rollins said:

"This sentiment has been assigned to one who was never
exactly born in New England, nor, perhaps, were any of his
ancestors. He is not technically, therefore, of New England
descent. Under the painful circumstances in which he has
found himself, however, he has done the best he could — he has
had all his children born there, 1 and has made of himself a New
England ancestor. He is a self-made man. More than this, and
better even, in cheerful, hopeful, helpful literature he is of New
England ascent. To ascend there in anything that's reasonable
is difficult, for — confidentially, with the door shut — we all know
that they are the brightest, ablest sons of that goodly land who
never leave it, and it is among and above them that Mr. Twain
has made his brilliant and permanent ascent — become a man of
mark."

I RISE to protest. I have kept still for years, but
really I think there is no sufficient justification
for this sort of thing. What do you want to celebrate
those people for? — those ancestors of yours of 1620 —
the Mayflower tribe, I mean. What do you want to
celebrate fern for? Your pardon: the gentleman at
my left assures me that you are not celebrating the
Pilgrims themselves, but the landing of the Pilgrims
at Plymouth Rock on the 2 2d of December. So you

1 A slight mistake: Mark Twain's children were born at Elmira,
in the state of New York.

86

PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS

are celebrating their landing. Why, the other pretext
was thin enough, but this is thinner than ever; the
other was tissue, tinfoil, fish-bladder, but this is
gold-leaf. Celebrating their landing! What was
there remarkable about it, I would like to know?
What can you be thinking of? Why, those Pilgrims
had been at sea three or four months. It was the
very middle of winter: it was as cold as death off
Cape Cod there. Why shouldn't they come ashore?
If they hadn't landed there would be some reason
for celebrating the fact. It would have been a case
of monumental leatherheadedness which the world
would not willingly let die. If it had been you,
gentlemen, you probably wouldn't have landed, but
you have no shadow of right to be celebrating, in
your ancestors, gifts which they did not exercise,
but only transmitted. Why, to be celebrating the
mere landing of the Pilgrims — to be trying to make
out that this most natural and simple and customary
procedure was an extraordinary circumstance — a
circumstance to be amazed at, and admired, aggran-
dized and glorified, at orgies like this for two hundred
and sixty years — hang it, a horse would have known
enough to land; a horse — Pardon again; the gen-
tleman on my right assures me that it was not merely
the landing of the Pilgrims that we are celebrating,
but the Pilgrims themselves. So we have struck an
inconsistency here — one says it was the landing, the
other says it was the Pilgrims. It is an inconsistency
characteristic of you intractable and disputatious
tribe, for you never agree about anything but Boston.
Well, then, what do you want to celebrate those

87

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

Pilgrims for? They were a mighty hard lot — you
know it. I grant you, without the slightest unwill-
ingness, that they were a deal more gentle and
merciful and just than were the people of Europe of
that day; I grant you that they are better than their
predecessors. But what of that? — that is nothing.
People always progress. You are better than your
fathers and grandfathers were (this is the first time
I have ever aimed a measureless slander at the
departed, for I consider such things improper). Yes,
those among you who have not been in the peniten-
tiary, if such there be, are better than your fathers
and grandfathers were; but is that any sufficient
reason for getting up annual dinners and celebrating
you? No, by no means — by no means. Well, I
repeat, those Pilgrims were a hard lot. They took
good care of themselves, but they abolished every-
body else's ancestors. I am a border-ruffian from the
State of Missouri. I am a Connecticut Yankee by
adoption. In me, you have Missouri morals, Con-
necticut culture; this, gentlemen, is the combination
which makes the perfect man. But where are my
ancestors? Whom shall I celebrate? Where shall I
find the raw material ?

My first American ancestor, gentlemen, was an
Indian — an early Indian. Your ancestors skinned
him alive, and I am an orphan. Later ancestors of
mine were the Quakers William Robinson, Marma-
duke Stevenson, et at. Your tribe chased them out
of the country for their religion's sake; promised
them death if they came back; for your ancestors
had forsaken the homes they loved, and braved the

PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS

perils of the sea, the implacable climate, and the
savage wilderness, to acquire that highest and most
precious of boons, freedom for every man on this
broad continent to worship according to the dictates
of his own conscience — and they were not going to
allow a lot of pestiferous Quakers to interfere with
it. Your ancestors broke forever the chains of polit-
ical slavery, and gave the vote to every man in this
wide land, excluding none! — none except those who
did not belong to the orthodox church. Your ances-
tors — yes, they were a hard lot; but, nevertheless,
they gave us religious liberty to worship as they
required us to worship, and political liberty to vote
as the church required; and so I the bereft one, I
the forlorn one, am here to do my best to help you
celebrate them right.

The Quaker woman Elizabeth Hooton was an
ancestress of mine. Your people were pretty severe
with her — you will confess that. But, poor thing!
I believe they changed her opinions before she died,
and took her into their fold ; and so we have every
reason to presume that when she died she went to
the same place which your ancestors went to. It is
a great pity, for she was a good woman. Roger
Williams was an ancestor of mine. I don't really
remember what your people did with him. But they
banished him to Rhode Island, anyway. And then,
I believe, recognizing that this was really carrying
harshness to an unjustifiable extreme, they took pity
on him and burned him. They were a hard lot ! All
those Salem witches were ancestors of mine! Your
people made it tropical for them. Yes, they did;

89

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

by pressure and the gallows they made such a clean
deal with them that there hasn't been a witch and
hardly a halter in our family from that day to this,
and that is one hundred and eighty-nine years. The
first slave brought into New England out of Africa
by your progenitors was an ancestor of mine — for I
am of a mixed breed, an infinitely shaded and exqui-
site Mongrel. I'm not one of your sham meerschaums
that you can color in a week. No, my complexion is
the patient art of eight generations. Well, in my
own time, I had acquired a lot of my kin — by pur-
chase, and swapping around, and one way and
another — and was getting along very well. Then,
with the inborn perversity of your lineage, you got
up a war, and took them all away from me. And so,
again am I bereft, again am I forlorn; no drop of
my blood flows in the veins of any living being who
is marketable.

my friends, hear me and reform! I seek your
good, not mine. You have heard the speeches. Dis-
band these New England societies — nurseries of a
system of steadily augmenting laudation and hosan-
naing, which, if persisted in uncurbed, may some day
in the remote future beguile you into prevaricating
and bragging. Oh, stop, stop, while you are still
temperate in your appreciation of your ancestors!
Hear me, I beseech you ; get up an auction and sell
Plymouth Rock! The Pilgrims were a simple and
ignorant race. They never had seen any good rocks
before, or at least any that were not watched, and so
they were excusable for hopping ashore in frantic
delight and clapping an iron fence around this one.

90

PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS

But you, gentlemen, are educated ; you are enlight-
ened ; you know that in the rich land of your nativity,
opulent New England, overflowing with rocks, this
one isn't worth, at the outside, more than thirty-five
cents. Therefore, sell it, before it is injured by
exposure, or at least throw it open to the patent-
medicine advertisements, and let it earn its taxes.

Yes, hear your true friend — your only true friend —
list to his voice. Disband these societies, hotbeds of
vice, of moral decay — perpetuators of ancestral super-
stition. Here on this board I see water, I see milk, I
see the wild and deadly lemonade. These are but
steps upon the downward path. Next we shall see
tea, then chocolate, then coffee — hotel coffee. A few
more years — all too few, I fear — mark my words,
we shall have cider! Gentlemen, pause ere it be too
late. You are on the broad road which leads to dis-
sipation, physical ruin, moral decay, gory crime, and
the gallows! I beseech you, I implore you, in the
name of your anxious friends, in the name of your
impending widows and orphans, stop ere it be too
late. Disband these New England societies, renounce
these soul-blistering saturnalia, cease from varnish-
ing the rusty reputations of your long-vanished
ancestors — the super-high-moral old iron-clads of
Cape Cod, the pious buccaneers of Plymouth Rock
— go home, and try to learn to behave !

However, chaff and nonsense aside, I think I honor
and appreciate your Pilgrim stock as much as you
do yourselves, perhaps; and I indorse and adopt a
sentiment uttered by a grandfather of mine once — a
man of sturdy opinions, of sincere make of mind, and

9i

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

not given to flattery. He said : ' ' People may talk as
they like about that Pilgrim stock, but, after all's said
and done, it would be pretty hard to improve on
those people; and, as for me, I don't mind coming
out flatfooted and saying there ain't any way to
improve on them — except having them born in
Missouri !"

92

ON ADAM
Delivered About 1880-85. (Exact Occasion Unknown.)

I NEVER feel wholly at home and equal to the
occasion except when I am to respond for the
royal family, or the President of the United States.
But I am full of serenity, courage, and confidence
then, because I know by experience that I can drink
standing "in silence" just as long as anybody wants
me to. Sometimes I have gone on responding to
those toasts with mute and diligent enthusiasm until
I have become an embarrassment, and people have
requested me to sit down and rest myself. But
responding by speech is a sore trial to me. The list
of toasts being always the same, one is always so apt
to forget and say something that has already been
said at some other banquet some time or other. For
instance, you take the toast to — well, take any toast
in the regulation lot, and you won't get far in your
speech before you notice that everything you are
saying is old; not only old, but stale; and not only
stale, but rancid. At any rate, that is my experience.
There are gifted men who have the faculty of saying
an old thing in a new and happy way — they rub the
old Aladdin lamp and bring forth the smoke and
thunder, the giants and genii, the pomp and
pageantry of all the wide and secret realms of
enchantment — and these men are the saviors of the

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

banquet; but for them it must have gone silent, as
Carlyle would say, generations ago, and ceased from
among the world's occasions and industries. But I
cannot borrow their trick ; I do not know the mystery
of how to rub the old lamp the right way.

And so it has seemed to me that for the behoof of
my sort and kind, the toast list ought to be recon-
structed. We ought to have some of the old themes
knocked out of it and a new one or two inserted in
their places. There are plenty of new subjects, if
we would only look around. And plenty of old ones,
too, that have not been touched. There is Adam, for
instance. Whoever talks about Adam at a banquet?
All sorts of recent and ephemeral celebrities are held
up and glorified on such occasions, but who ever says
a good word for Adam? Yet why is he neglected,
why is he ignored in this offensive way — can you tell
me that? What has he done, that we let banquet
after banquet go on and never give him a lift ? Con-
sidering what we and the whole world owe him, he
ought to be in the list — yes, and he ought to be
away up high in the list, too. He ought to take
precedence of the Press; yes, and the Army and
Navy; and Literature; and the Day we Celebrate;
and pretty much everything else. In the United
States he ought to be at the very top — he ought to
take precedence of the President; and even in the
loyalist monarchy he ought at least to come right
after the royal family. And be "drunk in silence
and standing," too. It is his right; and, for one, I
propose to stick here and drink him in silence and
standing till I can't tell a ministering angel from a

94

ON ADAM

tax collector. This neglect has been going on too
long. You always place Woman at the bottom of
the toast list ; it is but simple justice to place Adam
at the top of it — for, if it had not been for the help
of these two, where would you and your banquets
be? Answer me that. You must excuse me for
losing my temper and carrying on in this way; and
in truth I would not do it if it were almost anybody
but Adam; but I am of a narrow and clannish dis-
position, and I never can see a relative of mine
misused without going into a passion. It is no trick
for people with plenty of celebrated kin to keep
cool when their folk are misused; but Adam is the
only solitary celebrity in our family, and that man
that misuses him has got to walk over my dead body,
or go around, that is all there is to that. That is
the way I feel about Adam. Years ago when I went
around trying to collect subscriptions to build a
monument to him, there wasn't a man that would
give a cent; and generally they lost their temper
because I interrupted their business, and they drove
me away and said they didn't care A-dam for Adam —
and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred they got
the emphasis on the wrong end of the word. Such
is the influence of passion on a man's pronunciation.
I tried Congress. Congress wouldn't build the mon-
ument. They wouldn't sell me the Washington
monument, they wouldn't lend it to me temporarily
i while I could look around for another. I am nego-
| tiating for that Bastile yonder by the public square
lin Montreal, but they say they want to finish it
first. Of course that ends the project, because there

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

couldn't be any use of a monument after the man
was forgotten. It is a pity, because I thought Adam
might have pleasant associations with that build-
ing — he must have seen it in his time. But he shall
have a monument yet, even if it be only a grateful
place in the list of toasts ; for to him we owe the two
things which are most precious — Life and Death.
Life, which the young, the hopeful, the undefeated
hold above all wealth and all honors; and Death,
the refuge, the solace, the best and kindliest and
most prized friend and benefactor of the erring, the
forsaken, the old, and weary, and broken of heart,
whose burdens be heavy upon them, and who would
lie down and be at rest.

I would like to see the toast list reconstructed, for
it seems to me a needed reform ; and as a beginning
in this direction, if I can meet with a second, I beg
to nominate Adam. I am not actuated by family
considerations. It is a thing which I would do for
any other member of our family, or anybody else's
if I could honestly feel that he deserved it. But I
do not. If I seem to be always trying to shove Adam
into prominence, I can say sincerely that it is solely
because of my admiration of him as a man who was
a good citizen ; a good husband at a time when he
was not married; a good father at a time when he
had to guess his way, having never been young
himself; and would have been a good son if he had
had the chance. He could have been governor if he
had wanted to. He could have been postmaster-
general, speaker of the house, he could have been
anything he chose, if he had been willing to put

q6

ON ADAM
himself up and stand a canvass. Yet he lived and
2 1 PnVate c l tlzen - ^ut a handle to his name,
and he comes down to us as plain, simple Adam
and nothmg more-a man who could have elecS
Welf Major-General Adam or anything elJe as
easy as ro llmg off a log. A man who comes down to

stailtTl* Stam UP ° n WS name > «*" * was a
stem to take one apple when most of us would have
taken the whole crop. I stand up for him on accoun
of his sterhng pnvate virtues, and not because he
happens to be a connection of mine.

97

SPEECH OF SAMUEL L. CLEMENS

Thirteenth Annual Reunion of the Army of the Potomac,
Held in Hartford, Connecticut, June 8, 1881

(Reported by the Hartford "Courant")

To the regular toast, "The Benefit of Judicious Training,"
Samuel L. Clemens {Mark Twain), responded as follows:—

"Let but the thoughtful civilian instruct the soldier in his duties,
and the victory is sure."— Martin Farquhar Tupper on the Art
of War.

MR. CHAIRMAN,— I gladly join with my
fellow-townsmen in extending a hearty wel-
come to these illustrious generals and war-scarred
soldiers of the Republic. This is a proud day for us,
and, if the sincere desire of our hearts has been ful-
filled, it has not been an unpleasant day for them.
I am in full accord, sir, with the sentiment of the
toast — for I have always maintained, with enthu-
siasm, that the only wise and true way is for the
soldier to fight the battle and the unprejudiced civil-
ian to tell him how to do it; yet when I was invitee'
to respond to this toast and furnish this advice ant
instruction, I was almost as embarrassed as I was
gratified; for I could bring to this great service but
the one virtue of absence of prejudice and set opinion.
Still, but one other qualification was needed, and,.
it was of only minor importance— I mean, knowledge
of the subject— therefore I was not disheartened, fo«

98

SPEECH OF SAMUEL L. CLEMENS

I could acquire that, there being two weeks to spare.
A general of high rank in this Army of the Potomac
said two weeks was really more than I would need
for the purpose — he had known people of my style
who had learned enough in forty-eight hours to enable
them to advise an army. Aside from the compli-
ment, this was gratifying, because it confirmed the
impression I had had before. He told me to go to
the United States Military Academy at West Point —
said in his flowery professional way that the cadets
would "load me up." I went there and stayed two
days, and his prediction proved correct. I make no
boast on my own account — none; all I know about
military matters I got from the gentlemen at West
Point, and to them belongs the credit. They treated
me with courtesy from the first; but when my mis-
sion was revealed, this mere courtesy blossomed into
the warmest zeal. Everybody, officers and all, put
down their work and turned their whole attention
to giving me military information. Every question
I asked was promptly and exhaustively answered.
Therefore I feel proud to state that in the advice
which I am about to give you, as soldiers, I am backed
up by the highest military authority in the land, yes,
in the world, if an American does say it — West
Point!

To begin, gentlemen. When an engagement is
meditated, it is best to feel the enemy first. That
is, if it is night; for, as one of the cadets explained
to me, you do not need to feel him in the daytime,
because you can see him then. I never should have
thought of that, but it is true — perfectly true. In

99

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

the daytime the methods of procedure are various;
but the best, it seems to me, is one which was
introduced by General Grant. General Grant
always sent an active young redoubt to reconnoitre
and get the enemy's bearings. I got this from a
high officer at the Point, who told me he used to
be a redoubt on General Grant's staff and had done
it often.

When the hour for the battle is come, move to the
field with celerity — fool away no time. Under this
head I was told of a favorite maxim of General
Sheridan's. General Sheridan always said, "If the
siege train isn't ready, don't wait; go by any train
that is handy; to get there is the main thing." Now
that is the correct idea. As you approach the field it
is best to get out and walk. This gives you a better
chance to dispose your forces judiciously for the as-
sault. Get your artillery in position, and throw out
stragglers to right and left to hold your lines of
communication against surprise. See that every
hodcarrier connected with the mortar battery is at
his post. They told me at the Point that Napoleon
despised mortar batteries and never would use them ;
he said that for real efficiency he wouldn't give a
hatful of brickbats for a ton of mortar. However,
that is all he knew about it.

Everything being ready for the assault, you want
to enter the field with your baggage to the front.
This idea was invented by our renowned guest,
General Sherman. They told me General Sherman
said the trunks and steamer chairs make a good pro-
tection for the soldiers, but that chiefly they attract

IOO

SPEECH OF SAMUEL L. CLEMENS

the attention and rivet the interest of the enemy
and this gives you an opportunity to whirl the other
end of the column around and attack him in the
rear. I have given a good deal of study to this
tactic since I learned about it, and it appears to me
it is a rattling-good idea. Never fetch on your
reserves at the start. This was Napoleon's first mis-
take at Waterloo; next he assaulted with his bomb
proofs and embrasures and ambulances, when he
ought to have used a heavier artillery; thirdly, he
retired his right by ricochet — which uncovered his
pickets — when his only possibility of success lay in
doubling up his center flank by flank and throwing
out his chevaux-de-frise by the left oblique to relieve
the skirmish line and confuse the enemy — and at
West Point they said it would. It was about this
time that the emperor had two horses shot under
him. How often you see the remark that General
So-and-So in such and such a battle had two or
three horses shot under him. General Burnside and
many great European military men — as I was
informed by a high artillery officer at West Point,
has justly characterized this as a wanton waste of
projectiles, and he impressed upon me a conversa-
tion held in the tent of the Prussian chiefs at Grave-
lotte, in the course of which our honored guest just
referred to — General Burnside — observed that if you
can't aim a horse so as to hit the general with it,
shoot it over him and you may bag somebody on
the other side, whereas a horse shot under a general
does no sort of damage. I agree cordially with
General Burnside, and Heaven knows I shall rejoice

IOI

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

to see the artillerists of this land and all lands cease
from this wicked and idiotic custom.

At West Point they told me of another mistake
at Waterloo, viz., that the French were under fire
from the beginning of the fight until the end of it,
which was plainly a most effeminate and ill-timed
attention to comfort, and a fatal and foolish division
of military strength; for it probably took as many
men to keep up the fires as it did to do the fighting.
It would have been much better to have a small fire
in the rear and let the men go there by detachments
and get warm, and not try to warm up the whole
army at once. All the cadets said that. An assault
along the whole line was the one thing which could
have restored Napoleon's advantages at this junc-
ture; and he was actually rising in his stirrups to
order it when a sutler burst at his side and covered
him with dirt and debris; and before he could
recover his lost opportunity Wellington opened a
tremendous and devastating fire upon him from a
monster battery of vivandieres, and the star of the
great captain's glory set, to rise no more. The cadet
wept while he told me these mournful particulars.

When you leave a battlefield, always leave it in
good order. Remove the wreck and rubbish and
tidy up the place. However, in the case of a drawn
battle, it is neither party's business to tidy up any-
thing — you can leave the field looking as if the city
government of New York had bossed the fight.

When you are traversing in the enemy's country
in order to destroy his supplies and cripple his
resources, you want to take along plenty of camp

102

SPEECH OF SAMUEL L. CLEMENS

followers — the more the better. They are a tremen-
dously effective arm of the service, and they inspire in
the foe the liveliest dread. A West Point professor
told me that the wisdon of this was recognized as
far back as Scripture times. He quoted the verse.
He said it was from the new revision and was a little
different from the way it reads in the old one. I do
not recollect the exact wording of it now, but I
remember that it wound up with something about
such-and-such a devastating agent being as "terrible
as an army with bummers."

I believe I have nothing further to add but this:
The West Pointer said a private should preserve a
respectful attitude toward his superiors, and should
seldom or never proceed so far as to offer suggestions
to his general in the field. If the battle is not being
conducted to suit him it is better for him to resign.
By the etiquette of war, it is permitted to none
below the rank of newspaper correspondent to dic-
tate to the general in the field.

[While Mr. Clemens was speaking a band came
down the street and struck up "Marching Through
Georgia" in front of the hall. The remarks were
interrupted. A voice in the hall started the words,
others took it up, and the band finally joined in,
producing a thrilling effect. Hardly had Mr. Clemens
resumed when the outside band began "Auld Lang
Syne," and, grasping the situation, he waved his
hand in unison with the music, and the assemblage
sang the words to the finish.]

103

ADVICE TO YOUTH

About 1882

BEING told I would be expected to talk here, I
inquired what sort of a talk I ought to make.
They said it should be something suitable to youth —
something didactic, instructive, or something in the
nature of good advice. Very well. I have a few
things in my mind which I have often longed to say
for the instruction of the young; for it is in one's
tender early years that such things will best take
root and be most enduring and most valuable.
First, then, I will say to you, my young friends — and
I say it beseechingly, urgingly

Always obey your parents, when they are present.
This is the best policy in the long run, because if
you don't they will make you. Most parents think
they know better than you do, and you can generally
make more by humoring that superstition than you
can by acting on your own better judgment.

Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any,
also to strangers, and sometimes to others. If a
person offend you, and you are in doubt as to whether
it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme
measures; simply watch your chance and hit him
with a brick. That will be sufficient. If you shall
find that he had not intended any offense, come out
frankly and confess yourself in the wrong when you

104

ADVICE TO YOUTH

struck him; acknowledge it like a man and say you
didn't mean to. Yes, always avoid violence; in this
age of charity and kindliness, the time has gone by
for such things. Leave dynamite to the low and
unrefined.

Go to bed early, get up early — this is wise. Some
authorities say get up with the sun ; some others say
get up with one thing, some with another. But a
lark is really the best thing to get up with. It gives
you a splendid reputation with everybody to know
that you get up with the lark; and if you get the
right kind of a lark, and work at him right, you can
easily train him to get up at half past nine, every
time — it is no trick at all.

Now as to the matter of lying. You want to be
very careful about lying; otherwise you are nearly
sure to get caught. Once caught, you can never
again be, in the eyes of the good and the pure, what
you were before. Many a young person has injured
himself permanently through a single clumsy and
ill-finished lie, the result of carelessness born of incom-
plete training. Some authorities hold that the young
ought not to He at all. That, of course, is putting it
rather stronger than necessary; still, while I cannot
go quite so far as that, I do maintain, and I believe
I am right, that the young ought to be temperate in
the use of this great art until practice and experience
shall give them that confidence, elegance, and pre-
cision which alone can make the accomplishment
graceful and profitable. Patience, diligence, pains-
taking attention to detail — these are the require-
ments ; these, in time, will make the student perfect ;

105

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

upon these, and upon these only, may he rely as the
sure foundation for future eminence. Think what
tedious years of study, thought, practice, experience,
went to the equipment of that peerless old master
who was able to impose upon the whole world the
lofty and sounding maxim that "truth is mighty and
will prevail" — the most majestic compound fracture
of fact which any of woman born has yet achieved.
For the history of our race, and each individual's
experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth
is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.
There in Boston is a monument of the man who dis-
covered anaesthesia; many people are aware, in these
latter days, that that man didn't discover it at all,
but stole the discovery from another man. Is this
truth mighty, and will it prevail ? Ah no, my hearers,
the monument is made of hardy material, but the lie
it tells will outlast it a million years. An awkward,
feeble, leaky lie is a thing which you ought to make it
your unceasing study to avoid; such a lie as that
has no more real permanence than an average truth.
Why, you might as well tell the truth at once and be
done with it. A feeble, stupid, preposterous He will
not live two years — except it be a slander upon some-
body. It is indestructible, then, of course, but that
is no merit of yours. A final word : begin your prac-
tice of this gracious and beautiful art early — begin
now. If I had begun earlier, I could have learned
how.

Never handle firearms carelessly. The sorrow and
suffering that have been caused through the inno-
cent but heedless handling of firearms by the young!

1 06

ADVICE TO YOUTH

Dnly four days ago, right in the next farmhouse to
;he one where I am spending the summer, a grand-
nother, old and gray and sweet, one of the loveliest
spirits in the land, was sitting at her work, when her
foung grandson crept in and got down an old,
mattered, rusty gun which had not been touched for
nany years and was supposed not to be loaded, and
)ointed it at her, laughing and threatening to shoot.
.11 her fright she ran screaming and pleading toward
he door on the other side of the room; but as she
)assed him he placed the gun almost against her very
>reast and pulled the trigger! He had supposed it
vas not loaded. And he was right — it wasn't. So
here wasn't any harm done. It is the only case of
hat kind I ever heard of. Therefore, just the same,
lon't you meddle with old unloaded firearms; they
ire the most deadly and unerring things that have
rver been created by man. You don't have to take
iny pains at all with them; you don't have to have
i rest, you don't have to have any sights on the gun,
ron don't have to take aim, even. No, you just pick
>ut a relative and bang away, and you are sure to
*et him. A youth who can't hit a cathedral at thirty
raids with a Gatling gun in three-quarters of an
lour, can take up an old empty musket and bag his
grandmother every time, at a hundred. Think
vhat Waterloo would have been if one of the armies
lad been boys armed with old muskets supposed
lot to be loaded, and the other army had been corn-
Dosed of their female relations. The very thought
)f it makes one shudder.
There are many sorts of books ; but good ones are
107

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

the sort for the young to read. Remember that.
They are a great, an inestimable, an unspeakable
means of improvement. Therefore be careful in your
selection, my young friends; be very careful ; confine
yourselves exclusively to Robertson's Sermons, Bax-
ter's Saint* s Rest, The Innocents Abroad, and works
of that kind.

But I have said enough. I hope you will treasure
up the instructions which I have given you, and make
them a guide to your feet and a light to your under-
standing. Build your character thoughtfully and
painstaking upon these precepts, and by and by,
when you have got it built, you will be surprised
and gratified to see how nicely and sharply it resem-
bles everybody else's.

108

SPEECH

At the Banquet or the International Congress op
Wheelmen. (About 1884)

MR. CHAIRMAN, — I am not sure that I have
voice enough to make myself heard over such
a far-stretching landscape of humanity as this, but I
will do what I can. I have been asked to tell, briefly,
what bicycling is like, from the novice's point of
view. I judge that this is for the instruction of the
eight hundred guests, scattered through this vast
assemblage, who are not wheelmen; for it is not
likely that I could tell the rest of you anything about
bicycling which you do not already know. As twelve
speakers are to follow me, and as the weather is very
warm and close, besides, I shall be careful to make
quite sure of one thing at least — I will keep well
within the ten-minute limit allowed each speaker.

It was on the 10th of May of the present year that
a brace of curiously contrasted events added them-
selves to the sum of my experiences; for on that day
I confessed to age by mounting spectacles for the
first time, and in the same hour I renewed my youth,
to outward appearance, by mounting a bicycle for
the first time.

The spectacles stayed on.

109

THE MIDDLE PERIOD

TURNCOATS

With the nomination of James G. Blaine, in 1884, Mark Twain
joined with a group of distinguished men informing the "Mug-
wump " party which elected Grover Cleveland. During the campaign
he made a number of speeches one of which follows:

IT seems to me that there are things about this
campaign which almost amount to inconsist-
encies. The language may sound violent ; if it does,
it is traitor to my mood . The Mugwumps are con-
temptuously called turncoats by the Republican
speakers and journals. The charge is true: we have
turned our coats; we have no denials to make as to
that. But does a man become of a necessity base
because he turns his coat? And are there no Repub-
lican turncoats except the Mugwumps? Please look
at the facts in the case candidly and fairly before
sending us to political perdition without company.
Why are we called turncoats? Because we have
changed our opinion. Changed it about what?
About the greatness and righteousness of the prin-
ciples of the Republican party? No, that is not
changed. We believe in those principles yet; no one
doubts this. What, then, is it that we have changed
our opinion about? Why, about Mr. Blaine. That
is the whole change. There is no other. Decidedly,
we have done that, and do by no means wish to deny
it. But when did we change it? Yesterday? — last
week? — last summer? No — we changed it years and

"3

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

years ago, as far back as 1876. The vast bulk of the
Republican party changed its opinion of him at the
same time and in the same way. Will anybody be
hardy enough to deny this? Was there more than a
handful of really respectable and respect-worthy Re-
publicans on the north Atlantic seaboard who did not
change their opinion of Mr. Blaine at that time?
Was not the Republican atmosphere — both private
and journalistic — so charged with this fact that none
could fail to perceive it?

Very well. Was this multitude called turncoats
at that time? Of course not. That would have been
an absurdity. Was any of this multitude held in
contempt at that time, and derided and execrated,
for turning his Blaine coat? No one thought of
such a thing. Now, then, we who are called the
Mugwumps turned our coats at that time, and they
have remained so turned to this day. If it is shame-
ful to turn one's coat once, what measure of scorn
can adequately describe the man who turns it twice.
If to turn one's coat once makes one a dude, a
Pharisee, a Mugwump, and fool, where shall you find
language rancid enough to describe a double turn-
coat? If to turn your coat, at a time when no one
can impeach either the sincerity of the act or the
cleanliness of your motives in doing it, is held to be
a pathetic spectacle, what sort of spectacle is it
when such a coat-turner turns his coat again, and
this time under quite suggestively different circum-
stances? — that is to say, after a nomination. Do
these double turncoats exist? And who are they?
They are the bulk of the Republican party; and it

114

TURNCOATS

is hardly venturing too far to say that neither you
nor I can put his finger upon a respectable member
of that great multitude who can put a denial of it
instantly into words and without blush or stammer.
Here in Hartford they do not deny; they confess
that they are double turncoats. They say they are
convinced that when they formerly changed their
opinion about Mr. Blaine they were wrong, and so
they have changed back again. Which would seem
to be an admission that to change one's opinion and
turn one's coat is not necessarily a base thing to do,
after all. Yet they call my tribe customary hard
names in their next campaign speeches, just the
same, without seeming to see any inconsistency or
impropriety in it. Well, it is all a muddle to me. I
cannot make out how it is or why it that is a single
turncoat is a reptile and a double turncoat a bird of
Paradise.

I easily perceive that the Republican party has
deserted us and deserted itself; but I am not able
to see that we have deserted anything or anybody.
As for me, I have not deserted the Republican code
of principles, for I propose to vote its ticket, with
the presidential exception; and I have not deserted
Mr. Blaine, for as regards him I got my free papers
before he bought the property.

Personally I know that two of the best known of
the Hartford campaigners for Blaine did six months
ago hold as uncomplimentary opinions about him as
I did then, and as I do to-day. I am told, upon what
I conceive to be good authority, that the two or
three other Connecticut campaigners of prominence

115

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

of that ilk held opinions concerning him of that same
uncomplimentary breed up to the day of the nom-
ination. These gentlemen have turned their coats;
and they now admire Blaine; and not calmly, tem-
perately, but with a sort of ferocious rapture. In a
speech the other night, one of them spoke of the
author of the Mulligan letters — these strange Vassar-
like exhibitions of eagerness, gushingness, timidity,
secretiveness, frankness, naivete, unsagacity, and
almost incredible and impossible indiscretion — as
the " first statesman of the age." Another of them
spoke of "the three great statesmen of the age,
Gladstone, Bismarck, and Blaine." Doubtless this
profound remark was received with applause. But
suppose the gentlemen had had the daring to read
some of those letters first, appending the names of
Bismarck and Gladstone to them; do not you can-
didly believe that the applause would have been
missing ana that in its place there would have been
a smile which you could have heard to Springfield?
For no one has ever seen a Republican mass meeting
that was devoid of the perception of the ludicrous.

116

A TRIBUTE

This mock speech on the dead partisan written after the election
of Gr over Cleveland in 1884 was probably never delivered in public.

MR. CHAIRMAN,— That is a noble and beauti-
ful ancient sentiment which admonishes us to
speak well of the dead. Therefore let us try to do
this for our late friend who is mentioned in the text.
How full of life and strength and confidence and
pride he was but a few short months ago ; and, alas !
how dead he is to-day! We that are gathered at
these obsequies, we that are here to bury this dust,
and sing the parting hymn, and say the comforting
word to the widow and the orphan now left destitute
and sorrowing by him, their support and stay in the
post office, the consulship, the navy yard, and the
Indian reservation — we knew him, right well and
familiarly we knew him; and so it is meet that we,
and not strangers, should take upon ourselves these
last offices, lest his reputation suffer through expla-
nations of him which might not explain him happily,
and justifications of him which might not justify
him conclusively. First, it is right and well that we
censure him, in those few minor details wherein
some slight censure may seem to be demanded; to
the end that when we come to speak his praises the
good he did may shine with all the more intolerable
brightness by the contrast.

117

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

To begin, then, with the twilight side of his char-
acter: He was a slave; not a turbulent and trouble-
some, but a meek and docile, cringing and fawning,
dirt-eating and dirt-preferring slave; and Party was
his lord and master. He had no mind of his own,
no will of his own, no opinion of his own ; body and
soul he was the property and chattel of that master,
to be bought and sold, bartered, traded, given away,
at his nod and beck — branded, mutilated, boiled in
oil, if need were. And the desire of his heart was to
make of a nation of freemen a nation of slaves like
to himself; to bring to pass a time when it might be
said that "all are for the Party, and none are for
the State"; and the labors of his diligent hand and
brain did finally compass his desire. For he fooled
the people with plausible new readings of familiar
old principles, and beguiled them to the degradation
of their manhood and the destruction of their liber-
ties. He taught them that the only true freedom of
thought is to think as the party thinks; that the
only true freedon of speech is to speak as the party
dictates; that the only righteous toleration is toler-
ation of what the party approves; that patriotism,
duty, citizenship, devotion to country, loyalty to
the flag, are all summed up in loyalty to party.
Save the party, uphold the party, make the party
victorious, though all things else go to ruin and the
grave.

In these few little things he who lies here cold in
death was faulty. Say we no more concerning them,
but over them draw the veil of a charitable oblivion;
for the good which he did far overpasses this little

118

A TRIBUTE

evil. With grateful hearts we may unite in praises
and thanksgivings to him for one majestic fact of
his life — that in his zeal for his cause he finally over-
did it. The precious result was that a change came;
and that change remains, and will endure, and on

its banner is written

"Not all are for the Party — now some are for the
State."

119

CONSISTENCY

A paper read at the Hartford Monday Evening Club, following
the Blaine-Cleveland campaign, 1884. The proper emphasis for
delivery was indicated on the author's manuscript.

WE are continually warned to be consistent — by
the pulpit, by the newspaper, by our asso-
ciates. When we depart from consistency, we are
reproached for it by these censors. When a man
who has been born and brought up a Jew becomes
a Christian, the Jews sorrow over it and reproach
him for his inconstancy ; all his life he has denied the
divinity of Christ, but now he makes a lie of all his
past; upon him rests the stigma of inconsistency;
we can never be sure of him again. We put in the
deadly parallel columns what he said formerly and
what he says now, and his credit is gone. We say,
Trust him not; we know him now; he will change
again; and possibly again and yet again; he has
no stability.

There are men called life-long Democrats, life-long
Republicans. If one of these departs from his alle-
giance and votes the other ticket, the same thing hap-
pens as in the Jew's case. The man loses character. He
is inconsistent. He is a traitor. His past utterances
will be double columned with his present ones, and
he is damned; also despised — even by his new
political associates, for in theirs, as in all men's eyes,
inconsistency is a treason and matter for scorn.

120

CONSISTENCY

These are facts — common, every-day facts; and I
have chosen them for that reason; facts known to
everybody, facts which no one denies.

What is the most rigorous law of our being?
Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or
physical structure can stand still a year. It grows —
it must grow; nothing can prevent it. It must grow
downward or upward ; it must grow smaller or larger,
better or worse — it cannot stand still. In other
words, we change — and must change, constantly,
and keep on changing as long as we live. What,
then, is the true gospel of consistency? Change.
Who is the really consistent man? The man who
changes. Since change is the law of his being, he
cannot be consistent if he stick in a rut.

Yet, as the quoted facts show, there are those who
would misteach us that to stick in a rut is consist-
ency — and a virtue; and that to climb out of the
rut is inconsistency — and a vice. They will grant
you certain things, without murmur or dissent — as
things which go without saying; truisms. They will
grant that in time the crawling baby walks and must
not be required to go on crawling; that in time the
youth has outgrown the child's jacket and must not be
required to crowd himself into it; they grant you
that a child's knowledge is becoming and proper to
the child only so they grant him a school and teach
him, so that he may change and grow; they grant
you that he must keep on learning — through youth
and manhood and straight on — he must not be
allowed to suppose that the knowledge of thirty can
be any proper equipment for his fiftieth year; they

121

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

will grant you that a young man's opinions about
mankind and the universe are crude, and sometimes
foolish, and they would not dream of requiring him
to stick to them the rest of his life, lest by changing
them he bring down upon himself the reproach of
inconsistency. They will grant you these, and every-
thing else you can think of, in the line of progress
and change, until you get down to politics and
religion; there they draw the line. These must
suffer no change. Once a Presbyterian, always a
Presbyterian, or you are inconsistent and a traitor;
once a Democrat, always a Democrat, or you are
inconsistent and a traitor — a turncoat.

It is curious logic. Is there but one kind of treason ?
No man remains the same sort of Presbyterian he
was at first — the thing is impossible ; time and various
influences modify his Presby terianism ; it narrows or
it broadens, grows deeper or shallower, but does not
stand still. In some cases it grows so far beyond
itself, upward or downward, that nothing is really
left of it but the name, and perhaps an inconsequen-
tial rag of the original substance, the bulk being now
Baptist or Buddhist or something. Well, if he go
over to the Buddhists, he is a traitor. To whom?
To what? No man can answer those questions
rationally. Now if he does not go over what is he?
Plainly a traitor to himself, a traitor to the best and
the highest and the honestest that is in him. Which
of these treasons is the blackest one — and the shame-
fulest? Which is the real and right consistency? To
be consistent to a sham and an empty name, or con-
sistent to the law of one's being, which is change, and

122

CONSISTENCY

in this case requires him to move forward and keep
abreast of his best mental and moral progress, his
highest convictions of the right and the true? Sup-
pose this treason to the name of a church should
carry him clear outside of all churches? Is that a
blacker treason than to remain? So long as he is
loyal to his best self, what should he care for other
loyalties? It seems to me that a man should secure
the Well done, faithful servant, of his own conscience
first and foremost, and let all other loyalties go.

I have referred to the fact that when a man retires
from his political party he is a traitor — that he is so
pronounced in plain language. That is bold; so bold
as to deceive many into the fancy that it is true.
Desertion, treason — these are the terms applied.
Their military form reveals the thought in the man's
mind who uses them; to him sl political party is an
army. Well, is it? Are the two things identical?
Do they even resemble each other? Necessarily a
political party is not an army of conscripts, for they
are in the ranks by compulsion. Then it must be a
regular army, or an army of volunteers. Is it a
regular army? No, for these enlist for a specified
and well-understood term and can retire without
reproach when the term is up. Is it an army of
volunteers who have enlisted for the war, and may
righteously be shot if they leave before the war is
finished? No, it is not even an army in that sense.
Those fine military terms are high-sounding, empty
lies — and are no more rationally applicable to a
political party than they would be to an oyster bed.
The volunteer soldier comes to the recruiting office

123

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

and strips himself, and proves that he is so many
feet high, and has sufficiently good teeth, and no
fingers gone, and is sufficiently sound in body gen-
erally; he is accepted, but not until he has sworn a
deep oath, or made other solemn form of promise, to
march under that flag until that war is done or his
term of enlistment completed. What is the process
when a voter joins a party f Must he prove that he
is sound in any way, mind or body? Must he prove
that he knows anything — whatever — is capable of
anything? Does he take an oath or make a promise
of any sort? — or doesn't he leave himself entirely
freet If he were informed by the political boss that
if he join it must be forever; that he must be that
party's chattel and wear its brass collar the rest of
his days, would not that insult him? It goes without
saying. He would say some rude, unprintable thing
and turn his back on that preposterous organization.
But the political boss puts no conditions upon him
at all; and his volunteer makes no promises, enlists
for no stated term. He has in no sense become a part
of an army, he is in no way restrained of his freedom.
Yet he will presently find that his bosses and his
newspapers have assumed just the reverse of that;
that they have blandly arrogated to themselves an
iron-clad military authority over him; and within
twelve months, if he is an average man, he will have
surrendered his liberty, and will actually be silly
enough to believe that he cannot leave that party,
for any cause whatever, without being a shameful
traitor, a deserter, a legitimately dishonored man.
There you have the just measure of that freedom

124

CONSISTENCY

of conscience, freedom of opinion, freedon of speech
and action, which we hear so much inflated foolish-
ness about, as being the precious possession of the
Republic. Whereas, in truth, the surest way for a
man to make of himself a target for almost universal
scorn, obloquy, slander, and insult is to stop twad-
dling about these priceless independencies , and attempt
to exercise one of them. If he is a preacher, half his
congregation will clamor for his expulsion, and will
expel him, except they find it will injure real estate
in the neighborhood; if he is a mechanic, he will be
discharged, promptly; if he is a lawyer, his clients
will take their business elsewhere; if he is a doctor,
his own dead will turn against him.

I repeat that the new party member who supposed
himself independent will presently find that the party
has somehow got a mortgage on his soul, and that
within a year he will recognize the mortgage, deliver
up his liberty, and actually believe he cannot retire
from that party from any motive, howsoever high
and right, in his own eyes, without shame and
dishonor.

Is it possible for human wickedness to invent a
doctrine more infernal and poisonous than this? Is
there imaginable a baser servitude than it imposes?
What slave is so degraded as the slave who is proud
that he is a slave? What is the essential difference
between a life-long Democrat and any other kind of
life-long slave? Is it less humiliating to dance to the
lash of one master than another?

This atrocious doctrine of allegiance to party plays
directly into the hands of politicians of the baser

125

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

sort — and doubtless for that it was borrowed — or
stolen — from the monarchical system. It enables
them to foist upon the country officials whom no
self-respecting man would vote for, if he could but
come to understand that loyalty to himself is his
first and highest duty, not loyalty to any party name.
The wire workers, convention packers, know they
are not obliged to put up the fittest man for the
office, for they know that the docile party will vote
for any forked thing they put up, even though it do
not even strictly resemble a man.

I am persuaded — convinced — that this idea of con-
sistency — unchanging allegiance to party — has low-
ered the manhood of the whole nation — pulled it
down and dragged it in the mud. When Mr. Blaine
was nominated for the Presidency, I knew the man;
no, I judged I knew him; I don't know him now, but
at that time I judged I knew him; for my daily paper
had been painting him black, and blacker, and
blacker still, for a series of years, during which it had
no call to speak anything but the truth about him,
no call to be malicious toward him, no call to be
otherwise than just simply and honestly candid about
him, since he belonged to its own party and was not
before the nation as a detectable candidate for any-
thing. But within thirty days after the nomination
that paper had him all painted up white again. That
is not allegiance to one's best self, one's straitest
convictions; it is allegiance to party. Nobody likes
to eat a ton of black paint, and none but the master
can make the slave do it. Was this paper alone at
this singular feast? No; ten thousand other Repub-

126

CONSISTENCY

lican newspapers sat down at the same table and
worried down their ton apiece; and not any fewer
than ioo f ooo more-or-less-prominent politicians sat
down all over this country and worried down their
ton apiece; and after long, long and bitter gagging,
some millions of the common serfdom of the party
sat down and worried down their ton apiece. Paint?
It was dirt. Enough of it was eaten by the meek
Republican party to build a railroad embankment
from here to Japan; and it pains me to think that
a year from now they will probably have to eat it
all over again.

Well, there was a lot of queer feasting done in those
days. One learned in the law pondered the Mulligan
letters and other frightful literature, and rendered this
impressive verdict: he said the evidence would not
convict Mr. Blaine in a court of law, and so he would vote
for him. He did not say whether the evidences would
prove him innocent or not. That wasn't important.

Now, he knew that this verdict was absolutely in-
conclusive. He knew that it settled nothing, estab-
lished nothing whatever, and was wholly valueless as a
guide for his action, an answer to his questionings.

He knew that the merciful and righteous barriers
raised up by the laws of our humane age for the
shelter and protection of the possibly innocent, have
often and over again protected and rescued the cer-
tainly guilty. He knew that in this way many and
many a prisoner has gone unchastised from the court
when judge and jury and the whole public believed
with all their hearts that he was guilty. He knew —
all credit not discredit to our age that it is so — that

127

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

this result is so frequent, so almost commonplace,
that the mere failure to satisfy the exacting forms
of law and prove a man guilty in a court, is a hundred
thousand miles from proving him innocent. You
see a hiccoughing man wallowing in the gutter at
two o'clock in the morning; you think the thing all
over and weigh the details of it in your mind as
you walk home, and with immeasurable wisdom
arrive at the verdict that you don't know he wasn't a
Prohibitionist Of course you don't, and if you stop
and think a minute you would realize that you don't
know he was, either.

Well, a good clergyman who read the Mulligan
and other published evidences was not able to make
up his mind, but concluded to take refuge in the
verdict rendered by the citizen learned in the law;
take his intellectual and moral food at second-hand,
though he doesn't rank as an intellectual infant,
unable to chew his own moral and mental nourish-
ment; he decided that an apparently colored person
who couldn't be proven to be black in the baffling
crosslights of a court of law was white enough for
him, he being a little color blind, anyway, in matters
where the party is concerned, and so he came reluc-
tantly to the polls, with his redeeming blush on his
countenance, and put in his vote.

I met a certain other clergyman on the corner the
day after the nomination. He was very uncom-
promising. He said: "I know Blaine to the core;
I have known him from boyhood up; and I know
him to be utterly unprincipled and unscrupulous."
Within six weeks after that, this clergyman was at

128

CONSISTENCY

a Republican mass meeting in the Opera House, and
I think he presided. At any rate, he made a speech.
If you did not know that the character depicted in
it meant Mr. Blaine, you would suppose it meant —
well, there isn't anybody down here on the earth that
you can use as a comparison. It is praise, praise,
praise; laudation, laudation, laudation; glorifica-
tion, glorification, canonization. Conceive of the
general crash and upheaval and ripping and tearing
and readjustment of things that must have been
going on in that man's moral and mental chaos
for six weeks! What is any combination of inflam-
matory rheumatism and St. Vitus 's dance to this?
When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly
up-end a man's moral constitution and make a tem-
porary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going
to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it,
perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of
the country demands allegiance to party ? Shall you
also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his
conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing
lunatic, besides? Oh, no ! you say; it does not demand
that. But what if it produce that, in spite of you?
There is no obligation upon a man to do things
which he ought not to do, when drunk, but most men
will do them, just the same, and so we hear no
arguments about obligations in the matter; we only
hear men warned to avoid the habit of drinking; get
rid of the thing that can betray men into such things.
This is a funny business, all round. The same
men who enthusiastically preach loyal consistency
to church and party are always ready and willing

129

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

and anxious to persuade a Chinaman or an Indian
or a Kanaka to desert his Church, or a fellow-
American to desert his party. The man who deserts
to them is all that is high and pure and beautiful —
apparently; the man who deserts from them is all
that is foul and despicable. This is Consistency
with a capital C.

With the daintiest and self-complacentest sarcasm
the life-long loyalist scoffs at the Independent — or,
as he calls him, with cutting irony, the Mugwump;
makes himself too killingly funny for anything in
this world about him. But — the Mugwump can
stand it, for there is a great history at his back,
stretching down the centuries, and he comes of a
mighty ancestry. He knows that in the whole his-
tory of the race of men no single great and high and
beneficent thing was ever done for the souls and
bodies, the hearts and the brains, of the children of
this world, but a Mugwump started it and Mug-
wumps carried it to victory. And their names are
the stateliest in history: Washington, Garrison,
Galileo, Luther, Christ. Loyalty to petrified opinions
never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in
this world — and never will.

To return to the starting point: I am persuaded
that the world has been tricked into adopting some
false and most pernicious notions about consistency —
and to such a degree that the average man has
turned the rights and wrongs of things entirely
around, and is proud to be "consistent," unchanging,
immovable, fossilized, where it should be his humil-
iation that he is so.

130

HENRY M. STANLEY

Address Delivered in Boston, November, 1886
Mr. Clemens introduced Mr. Stanley.

EDIES AND GENTLEMEN, if any should ask v
Why is it that you are here as introducer of
the lecturer? I should answer that I happened to*
be around and was asked to perform this function..
I was quite willing to do so, and, as there was no
sort of need of an introduction, anyway, it could be
necessary only that some person come forward for
a moment and do an unnecessary thing, and this is,
quite in my line. Now, to introduce so illustrious;
a name as Henry M. Stanley by any detail of what
the man has done is clear aside from my purpose^
that would be stretching the unnecessary to an uncon^
scionable degree. When I contrast what I have
achieved in my measurably brief life with what he
has achieved in his possibly briefer one, the effect is.
to sweep utterly away the ten-story edifice of my
own self -appreciation and leave nothing behind bu&
the cellar. When you compare these achievements,
of his with the achievements of really great men who
exist in history, the comparison, I believe, is in his
favor. I am not here to disparage Columbus.

No, I won't do that; but when you come to regard
the achievements of these two men, Columbus and
Stanley, from the standpoint of the difficulties they

131

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

encountered, the advantage is with Stanley and
against Columbus. Now, Columbus started out to
discover America. Well, he didn't need to do any-
thing at all but sit in the cabin of his ship and hold
his grip and sail straight on, and America would
discover itself. Here it was, barring his passage the
whole length and breadth of the South American con-
tinent, and he couldn't get by it. He'd got to dis-
cover it. But Stanley started out to find Doctor
Livingstone, who was scattered abroad, as you may
say, over the length and breadth of a vast slab of
Africa as big as the United States.

It was a blind kind of search. He was the worst
scattered of men. But I will throw the weight of
this introduction upon one very peculiar feature of
Mr. Stanley's character, and that is his indestructible
Americanism — an Americanism which he is proud of.
And in this day and time, when it is the custom to
ape and imitate English methods and fashions, it is
like a breath of fresh air to stand in the presence
of this untainted American citizen who has been
caressed and complimented by half of the crowned
heads of Europe, who could clothe his body from
his head to his heels with the orders and decorations
lavished upon him. And yet, when the untitled
myriads of his own country put out their hands in
welcome to him and greet him, "Well done," through
the Congress of the United States, that is the crown
that is worth all the rest to him. He is a product of
institutions which exist in no other country on earth
— institutions that bring out all that is best and most
heroic in a man. I introduce Henry M. Stanley.

132

ON STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE

Mr. Clemens at dinner by the Whitefriars' Club, London, at the
Mitre Tavern, in reply to the toast in his honor said:

GENTLEMEN, — I thank you very heartily
indeed for this expression of kindness toward
me. What I have done for England and civilization
in the arduous affairs which I have engaged in (that
is good: that is so smooth that I will say it again
and again) — what I have done for England and civi-
lization in the arduous part I have performed I have
done with a single-hearted devotion and with no
hope of reward. I am proud, I am very proud, that
it was reserved for me to find Doctor Livingstone
and for Mr. Stanley to get all the credit. I hunted
for that man in Africa all over seventy-five or one
hundred parishes, thousands and thousands of miles
in the wilds and deserts all over the place, sometimes
riding negroes and sometimes travelling by rail. I
didn't mind the rail or anything else, so that I didn't
come in for the tar and feathers. I found that man
at Ujiji — a place you may remember if you have ever
been there — and it was a very great satisfaction that
I found him just in the nick of time. I found that
poor old man deserted by his niggers and by his
geographers, deserted by all of his kind except the
gorillas — dejected, miserable, famishing, absolutely
famishing— but he was eloquent. Just as I found

i33

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

him he had eaten his last elephant, and he said to
me: "God knows where I shall get another.' ' He
had nothing to wear except his venerable and honor-
able naval suit, and nothing to eat but his diary.

But I said to him: "It is all right; I have discov-
ered you, and Stanley will be here by the four-o'clock
train and will discover you officially, and then we
will turn to and have a reg'lar good time." I said:
"Cheer up, for Stanley has got corn, ammunition,
glass beads, hymn books, whisky, and everything
which the human heart can desire; he has got all
kinds of valuables, including telegraph poles and a
few cart loads of money. By this time communica-
tion has been made with the land of Bibles and civi-
lization, and property will advance." And then we
surveyed all that country, from Ujiji, through
Unanogo and other places, to Unyanyembe. I
mention these names simply for your edification,
nothing more — do not expect it — particularly as
intelligence to the Royal Geographical Society. And
then, having filled up the old man, we were all too
full for utterance and departed. We have since then
feasted on honors.

So far as I am personally concerned, I am here to
stay a few months, and to see English people and to
learn English manners and customs, and to enjoy
myself ; so the simplest thing I can do is to thank you
for the toast you have honored me with and for the
remarks you have made, and to wish health and
prosperity to the Whitefriars' Club, and to sink
down to my accustomed level.

i34

GENERAL GRANT'S GRAMMAR

Delivered at the Army and Navy Club (1886)

1ATELY a great and honored author, Matthew
j Arnold, has been finding fault with General
Grant's English. That would be fair enough, maybe,
if the examples of imperfect English averaged more
instances to the page in General Grant's book than
they do in Arnold's criticism on the book — but they
do not. It would be fair enough, maybe, if such
instances were commoner in General Grant's book
than they are in the works of the average standard
author — but they are not. In fact, General Grant's
derelictions in the matter of grammar and construc-
tions are not more frequent than such derelictions
in the works of a majority of the professional authors
of our time, and of all previous times — authors as
exclusively and painstakingly trained to the literary
trade as was General Grant to the trade of war.
This is not a random statement; it is a fact, and
easily demonstrable. I have a book at home called
Modern English Literature: Its Blemishes and Defects,
by Henry H. Breen, a countryman of Mr. Arnold.
In it I find examples of bad grammar and slovenly
English from the pens of Sydney Smith, Sheridan,
Hallam, Whately, Carlyle, Disraeli, Allison, Junius,
Blair, Macaulay, Shakespeare, Milton, Gibbon,
Southey, Lamb, Landor, Smollet, Walpole, Walker

i35

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

(of the dictionary), Christopher North, Kirk White,
Benjamin Franklin, Sir Walter Scott, and Mr.
Lindley Murray (who made the grammar).

In Mr. Arnold's criticism on General Grant's book
we find two grammatical crimes and more than
several examples of very crude and slovenly English,
enough of them to easily entitle him to a lofty place
in the illustrious list of delinquents just named.

The following passage all by itself ought to elect
him: "Meade suggested to Grant that he might
wish to have immediately under him, Sherman, who
had been serving with Grant in the West. He begged
him not to hesitate if he thought it for the good of
the service. Grant assured him that he had not
thought of moving him, and in his memoirs, after
relating what had passed, he adds," etc. To read
that passage a couple of times would make a man
dizzy; to read it four times would make him drunk.

Mr. Breen makes this discriminating remark: "To
suppose that because a man is a poet or an historian,
he must be correct in his grammar, is to suppose
that an architect must be a joiner, or a physician a
compounder of medicine." Mr. Breen's point is
well taken. If you should climb the mighty Matter-
horn to look out over the kingdoms of the earth, it
might be a pleasant incident to find strawberries up
there. But Great Scott ! you don't climb the Matter-
horn for strawberries!

People may hunt out what microscopic motes they
please, but, after all, the fact remains and cannot
be dislodged, that General Grant's book is a great,
and in its peculiar department unique and unap-

136

GENERAL GRANT'S GRAMMAR

proachable, literary masterpiece. In their line, there
is no higher literature than those modest, simple
memoirs. Their style is at least flawless and no man
could improve upon it, and great books are weighed
and measured by their style and matter, and not by
the trimmings and shadings of their grammar.

There is that about the sun which makes us forget
his spots, and when we think of General Grant our
pulses quicken and his grammar vanishes; we only
remember that this is the simple soldier, who, all
untaught of the silken phrase makers, linked words
together with an art surpassing the art of the schools
and put into them a something which will still bring
to American ears, as long as America shall last,
the roll of his vanished drums and the tread of his
marching hosts. What do we care for grammar when
we think of those thunderous phrases: "uncondi-
tional and immediate surrender," "I propose to move
immediately upon your works," "I propose to fight
it out on this line if it takes all summer." Mr.
Arnold would doubtless claim that that last phrase
is not strictly grammatical, and yet it did certainly
wake up this nation as a hundred million tons of
A No. i, fourth-proof, hard-boiled, hide-bound gram-
mar from another mouth could not have done. And
finally we have that gentler phrase, that one which
shows you another true side of the man, shows you
that in his soldier heart there was room for other
than glory war mottoes and in his tongue the gift to
fitly phrase them — "Let us have peace."

i37

THE OLD-FASHIONED PRINTER

Address at the Typothet2e Dinner Given at Delmonico's,
January 18, 1886, Commemorating the Birth-
day of Benjamin Franklin

Mr. Clemens responded to the toast " The Compositor."

THE chairman's historical reminiscences of
Gutenberg have caused me to fall into remi-
niscences, for I myself am something of an antiquity.
All things change in the procession of years, and it
may be that I am among strangers. It may be that
the printer of to-day is not the printer of thirty -five
years ago. I was no stranger to him. I knew him
well. I built his fire for him in the winter mornings ;
I brought his water from the village pump ; I swept
out his office; I picked up his type from under his
stand; and, if he were there to see, I put the good
type in his case and the broken ones among the "hell
matter"; and if he wasn't there to see, I dumped it
all with the "pi" on the imposing stone — for that
was the furtive fashion of the cub, and I was a cub.
I wetted down the paper Saturdays, I turned it Sun-
days — for this was a country weekly; I rolled, I
washed the rollers, I washed the forms, I folded the
papers, I carried them around at dawn Thursday
mornings. The carrier was then an object of interest
to all the dogs in town. If I had saved up all the
bites I ever received, I could keep M. Pasteur busy

138

THE OLD-FASHIONED PRINTER

for a year. I enveloped the papers that were for the
mail — we had a hundred town subscribers and three
hundred and fifty country ones ; the town subscribers
paid in groceries and the country ones in cabbages
and cordwood — when they paid at all, which was
merely sometimes, and then we always stated the
fact in the paper, and gave them a puff; and if we
forgot it they stopped the paper. Every man on
the town list helped edit the thing — that is, he gave
orders as to how it was to be edited; dictated its
opinions, marked out its course for it, and every time
the boss failed to connect he stopped his paper. We
were just infested with critics, and we tried to satisfy
them all over. We had one subscriber who paid cash,
and he was more trouble than all the rest. He
bought us once a year, body and soul, for two dol-
lars. He used to modify our politics every which
way, and he made us change our religion four times
in five years. If we ever tried to reason with him,
he would threaten to stop his paper, and, of course,
that meant bankruptcy and destruction. That man
used to write articles a column and a half long, leaded
long primer, and sign them "Junius," or "Veritas,"
or "Vox Populi," or some other high-sounding rot;
and then, after it was set up, he would come in and
say he had changed his mind — which was a gilded
figure of speech, because he hadn't any — and order
it to be left out. We couldn't afford "bogus" in
that office, so we always took the leads out, altered
the signature, credited the article to the rival paper,
in the next village, and put it in. Well, we did have
one or two kinds of "bogus." Whenever there was

i39

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

a barbecue, or a circus, or a baptizing, we knocked
off for half a day, and then to make up for short
matter we would "turn over ads" — turn over the
whole pages and duplicate it. The other "bogus"
was deep philosophical stuff, which we judged nobody
ever read; so we kept a galley of it standing, and
kept on slapping the same old batches of it in, every
now and then, till it got dangerous. Also, in the
early days of the telegraph we used to economize on
the news. We picked out the items that were point-
less and barren of information and stood them on a
galley, and changed the dates and localities, and
used them over and over again till the public interest
in them was worn to the bone. We marked the ads,
but we seldom paid any attention to the marks after-
ward; so the life of a "td" ad and a "t£" ad was
equally eternal. I have seen a "td" notice of a
sheriff's sale still booming serenely along two years
after the sale was over, the sheriff dead, and the
whole circumstance become ancient history. Most
of the yearly ads were patent-medicine stereotypes,
and we used to fence with them.

I can see that printing office of prehistoric times
yet, with its horse bills on the walls, its "d" boxes
clogged with tallow, because we always stood the
candle in the "k" box nights, its towel, which was
not considered soiled until it could stand alone, and
other signs and symbols that marked the establish-
ment of that kind in the Mississippi Valley; and I
can see, also, the tramping "jour, " who flitted by in
the summer and tarried a day, with his wallet stuffed
with one shirt and a hatful of handbills, for if he

140

THE OLD-FASHIONED PRINTER

couldn't get any type to set he would do a temper-
ance lecture. His way of life was simple, his needs
not complex; all he wanted was plate and bed and
money enough to get drunk on, and he was satisfied.
But it may be, as I have said, that I am among
strangers, and sing the glories of a forgotten age to
unfamiliar ears, so I will "make even" and stop.

141

YALE COLLEGE SPEECH

In June, 1888, Yale College conferred on Mark Twain the degree
of Master of Arts. Later in the year he made the following address
to the students.

I WAS sincerely proud and grateful to be made a
Master of Arts by this great and venerable univer-
sity, and I would have come last June to testify this
feeling, as I do now testify it, but that the sudden
and unexpected notice of the honor done me found
me at a distance from home and unable to discharge
that duty and enjoy that privilege.

Along at first, say for the first month or so, I did
not quite know how to proceed, because of my not
knowing just what authorities and privileges belonged
to the title which had been granted me, but after
that I consulted some students of Trinity, in Hart-
ford, and they made everything clear to me. It was
through them that I found out that my title made
me head of the governing body of the university and
lodged in me very broad and severely responsible
powers. It is through trying to work these powers
up to their maximum of efficiency that I have had
such a checkered career this year. I was told that
it would be necessary for me to report to you at this
time, and, of course, I comply, though I would have
preferred to put it off till I could make a better
showing, for, indeed, I have been so pertinaciously
hindered and obstructed at every turn by the faculty

142

YALE COLLEGE SPEECH

that it would be difficult to prove that the university
is really in any better shape now than it was when I
first took charge. In submitting my report I am
sorry to have to begin it with the remark that
respect for authority seems to be at a quite low ebb
in the college. It is true that this has caused me
pain, but it has not discouraged me. By advice, I
turned my earliest attention to the Greek department.
I told the Greek professor I had concluded to drop
the use of the Greek written character, because it is
so hard to spell with, and so impossible to read after
you get it spelled. Let us draw the curtain there.
I saw by what followed that nothing but early neg-
lect saved him from being a very profane man. I
ordered the professor of mathematics to simplify the
whole system, because the way it was I couldn't
understand it, and I didn't want things going on in
the college in what was practically a clandestine
fashion. I told him to drop the conundrum system;
it was not suited to the dignity of a college, which
should deal in facts, not guesses and suppositions;
we didn't want any more cases of if A and B stand
at opposite poles of the earth's surface and C at the
equator of Jupiter, at what variations of angle will
the left link of the moon appear to these different
parties? I said you just let that thing alone; it's
plenty time to get in a sweat about it when it hap-
pens. As like as not it ain't going to do any harm
anyway. His reception of these instructions bordered
on insubordination; in so much that I felt obliged
to take his number and report him. I found the
astronomer of the university gadding around after

i43

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

comets and other such odds and ends — tramps and
derelicts of the skies. I told him prettly plainly that
we couldn't have that. I told him it was no economy
to go on piling up and piling up raw material in the
way of new stars and comets and asteroids that we
couldn't ever have any use for till we had worked
off the old stock. I said if I caught him strawberry-
ing around after any more asteroids, especially, I
should have to fire him out. Privately, prejudice got
the best of me there, I ought to confess it. At bottom
I don't really mind comets so much, but somehow I
have always been down on asteroids. There is
nothing mature about them; I wouldn't sit up
nights, the way that man does, if I could get a
basketful of them. He said it was the best line of
goods he had ; he said he could trade them to Roches-
ter for comets, and trade the comets to Harvard for
nebulae, and trade the nebulae to the Smithsonian
for flint hatchets. I felt obliged to stop this thing
on the spot; I said we couldn't have the university
turned into an astronomical junk shop.

And while I was at it I thought I might as well
make the reform complete; the astronomer is ex-
traordinarily mutinous ; and so with your approval
I will transfer him to the law department and put
one of the law students in his place. A boy will be
more biddable, more tractable, also cheaper. It is
true he cannot be intrusted with important work at
first, but he can comb the skies for nebulae till he
gets his hand in. I have other changes in mind,
but, as they are in the nature of surprises, I judge it
politic to leave them unspecified at this time.

144

WELCOME HOME

To a Baseball Team Returning From a World Tour by
Way of the Sandwich Islands (1889)

THOUGH not a native, as intimated by the
chairman, I visited, a great many years ago,
the Sandwich Islands — that peaceful land, that beau-
tiful land, that far-off home of profound repose, and
soft indolence, and dreamy solitude, where life is one
long slumberous Sabbath, the climate one long deli-
cious summer day, and the good that die experience
no change, for they but fall asleep in one heaven and
wake up in another. And these boys have played
baseball there! — baseball, which is the very symbol,
the outward and visible expression, of the drive and
push and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing,
booming nineteenth century ! One cannot realize it,
the place and the fact are so incongruous; it's like
interrupting a funeral with a circus. Why, there's
no legitimate point of contact, no possible kinship
between baseball and the Sandwich Islands! Base-
ball is all fact; the islands all sentiment. In base-
ball you've got to do everything just right, or you
don't get there; in the islands you've got to do
everything just wrong, or you can't stay there. You
do it wrong to get it right, for if you do it right you
get it wrong; there isn't any way to get it right but
to do it wrong, and the wronger you do it the lighter

145

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

*t is. The natives illustrate this every day. They
never mount a horse from the larboard side, they
always mount him from the starboard ; on the other
hand, they never milk a cow on the starboard side,
they always milk her on the larboard; it's why you
see so many short people there — they've got their
heads kicked off. When they meet on the road,
they don't turn out to the right, they turn out to
the left. And so, from always doing everything
wrong end first, that way, it makes them left handed
— left handed and cross eyed; they are all so. When
a child is born, the mother goes right along with her
ordinary work, without losing half a day; it's the
father that knocks off and goes to bed till he gets
over the circumstances. And those natives don't
trace descent through the male line, but through the
female; they say they always know who a child's
mother was. Well, that odd system is well enough
there, because there a woman often has as many as
six or seven husbands, all at the same time and all
properly married to her, and no blemish about the
matter anywhere. Yet there is no fussing, no trouble.
When a child is born the husbands all meet together
in convention, in a perfectly orderly way, and elect
the father. And the whole thing is perfectly fair ; at
least as fair as it would be anywhere. Of course, you
can't keep politics out — you couldn't do that in any
country; and so, if three of the husbands are Repub-
licans and four are Democrats, it doesn't make any
difference how strong a Republican aspect the baby
has got, that election is going Democratic every
time. And in the matter of that election those poor

146

WELCOME HOME

people stand at the proud altitude of the very highest
Christian civilization ; for they know, as well as we,
that all women are ignorant, and so they don't allow
that mother to vote. In those islands the cats
haven't any tails and the snakes haven't any teeth;
and what is still more irregular, the man that loses
a game gets the pot. And as to dress; the native
women all wear a single garment — but the men don't.
No, the men don't wear anything at all; they hate
display. When they even wear a smile they think
they are overdressed. Speaking of birds, the only
bird there that has ornamental feathers has only
two — just barely enough to squeeze through with —
and they are under its wings instead of on top of its
head, where, of course, they ought to be to do any
good. The native language is soft and liquid and
flexible, and in every way efficient and satisfactory —
till you get mad; then there you are; there isn't
anything in it to swear with. Good judges all say
it is the best Sunday language there is ; but then all
the other six days in the week it just hangs idle on
your hands; it isn't any good for business and you
can't work a telephone with it. Many a time the
attention of the missionaries has been called to this
defect, and they are always promising they are going
to fix it; but, no, they go fooling along and fooling
along and nothing is done. Speaking of education,
everybody there is educated, from the highest to the
lowest; in fact, it is the only country in the world
where education is actually universal. And yet every
now and then you run across instances of ignorance
that are simply revolting — simply degrading to the

i47

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

human race. Think of it — there, the ten takes the
ace ! But let us not dwell on such things ; they make
a person ashamed. Well, the missionaries are always
going to fix that, but they put it off, and put it off,
and put it off, and so that nation is going to keep on
going down and down and down, till some day you
will see a pair of jacks beat a straight flush.

Well, it is refreshment to the jaded, water to the
thirsty, to look upon men who have so lately breathed
the soft airs of those isles of the blest and had before
their eyes the inextinguishable vision of their beauty.
No alien land in all the world has any deep, strong
charm for me but that one, no other land could so
longingly and so beseechingly haunt me, sleeping
and waking, through half a lifetime, as that one has
done. Other things leave me, but it abides; other
things change, but it remains the same. For me its
balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas
flashing in the sun, the pulsing of its surf-beat is in
my ear; I can see its garlanded crags, its leaping
cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its
remote summits floating like islands above the cloud
rack; I can feel the spirit of its woodland solitudes,
I can hear the splash of its brooks; in my nostrils
still lives the breath of flowers that perished twenty
years ago. And these world wanderers who sit before
us here have lately looked upon these things! — and
with eyes of flesh, not the unsatisfying vision of the
spirit. I envy them that !

Yes, and I would envy them somewhat of the
glories they have achieved in their illustrious march
about the mighty circumference of the earth, if it

148

WELCOME HOME

were fair; but, no, it was an earned run, and envy
would be out of place. I will rather applaud — add
my hail and welcome to the vast shout now going up,
from Maine to the Gulf, from the Florida Keys to
frozen Alaska, out of the throats of the other sixty-
five millions of their countrymen. They have carried
the American name to the uttermost parts of the
earth — and covered it with glory every time. That
is a service to sentiment; but they did the general
world a large practical service, also — a service to the
great science of geography. Ah, think of that ! We
don't talk enough about that — don't give it its full
value. Why, when these boys started out you
couldn't see the equator at all; you could walk right
over it and never know it was there. That is the
kind of equator it was. Such an equator as that
isn't any use to anybody; as for me, I would rather
not have any equator at all than a dim thing like
that, that you can't see. But that is all fixed now:
you can see it now, you can't run over it now and
not know it's there; and so I drink long life to the
boys who ploughed a new equator round the globe
stealing bases on their bellies!

149

ON FOREIGN CRITICS

After-dinner Speech (About 1889)

IF I look harried and worn, it is not from an ill
conscience. It is from sitting up nights to worry
about the foreign critic. He won't concede that we
have a civilization — a ' ' real ' ' civilization. Five years
ago, he said we had never contributed anything to
the betterment of the world. And now comes Sir
Lepel Griffin, whom I had not suspected of being in
the world at all, and says, "There is no country call-
ing itself civilized where one would not rather live
than in America, except Russia." That settles it.
That is, it settles it for Europe; but it doesn't make
me any more comfortable than I was before.

What is "real" civilization? Nobody can answer
that conundrum. They have all tried. Then suppose
we try to get at what it is not, and then subtract the
what it is not from the general sum, and call the
remainder "real" civilization — so as to have a place
to stand on while we throw bricks at these people.
Let us say, then, in broad terms, that any system
which has in it any one of these things — to wit,
human slavery, despotic government, inequality,
numerous and brutal punishments for crime, super-
stition almost universal, ignorance almost universal,
and dirt and poverty almost universal — is not a real
civilization, and any system which has none of them

150

ON FOREIGN CRITICS

is. If you grant these terms, one may then consider
this conundrum : How old is real civilization ? The
answer is easy and unassailable. A century ago it
had not appeared anywhere in the world during a
single instant since the world was made. If you
grant these terms — and I don't see why it shouldn't
be fair, since civilization must surely be fair, since
civilization must surely mean the humanizing of a
people, not a class — there is to-day but one real civi-
lization in the world, and it is not yet thirty years
old. We made the trip and hoisted its flag when we
disposed of our slavery.

However, there are some partial civilizations
scattered around over Europe — pretty lofty civiliza-
tions they are, too — but who begot them? What is
the seed from which they sprang? Liberty and intel-
ligence. What planted that seed? There are dates
and statistics which suggest that it was the American
Revolution that planted it. When that revolution
began, monarchy had been on trial some thousands
of years, over there, and was a distinct and convicted
failure, every time. It had never produced anything
but a vast, a nearly universal savagery, with a thin
skim of civilization on top, and the main part of
that was nickel plate and tinsel. The French,
imbruted and impoverished by centuries of oppres-
sion and official robbery, were a starving nation
clothed in rags, slaves of an aristocracy and smirk-
ing dandies clad in unearned silks and velvet. It
makes one's cheek burn to read of the laws of the
time and realize that they were for human beings;
realize that they originated in this world and not in

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

hell. Germany was unspeakable. In the Scotch
lowlands the people lived in sties and were human
swine; in the highlands drunkenness was general
and it hardly smirched a young girl to have a family
of her own. In England there was a sham liberty,
and not much of that ; crime was general ; ignorance
the same; poverty and misery were widespread;
London fed a tenth of her population by charity;
the law awarded the death penalty to almost every
conceivable offense ; what was called medical science
by courtesy stood where it had stood for two thou-
sand years; Tom Jones and Squire Western were
gentlemen.

The printer's art had been known in Germany and
France three and a quarter centuries, and in England
three. In all that time there had not been a news-
paper in Europe that was worthy the name. Mon-
archies had no use for that sort of dynamite. When
we hoisted the banner of revolution and raised the
first genuine shout for human liberty that had ever
been heard, this was a newspaperless globe. Eight
years later there were six daily journals in London
to proclaim to all the nations the greatest birth this
world had ever seen. Who woke that printing press
out of its trance of three hundred years? Let us be
permitted to consider that we did it. Who summoned
the French slaves to rise and set the nation free?
We did it. What resulted in England and on the
Continent? Crippled liberty took up its bed and
walked. From that day to this its march has not
halted, and please God it never will. We are called
the nation of inventors. And we are. We could still

152

ON FOREIGN CRITICS

claim that title and wear its loftiest honors if we had
stopped with the first thing we ever invented — which
was human liberty. Out of that invention has come
the Christian world's great civilization. Without it
it was impossible — as the history of all the centuries
has proved. Well, then, who invented civilization?
Even Sir Lepel Griffin ought to be able to answer
that question. It looks easy enough. We have con-
tributed nothing! Nothing hurts me like ingratitude.

i53

MISTAKEN IDENTITY

Address at the Annual ''Ladies' Day," Papyrus Club,

Boston

IADIES AND GENTLEMEN,— I am prefectly
j astonished — a-s-t-o-n-i-s-h-e-d — ladies and gen-
tlemen — astonished at the way history repeats itself.
I find myself situated at this moment exactly and
precisely as I was once before, years ago, to a jot, to
a tittle — to a very hair. There isn't a shade of differ-
ence. It is the most astonishing coincidence that
ever — but wait. I will tell you the former instance,
and then you will see it for yourself. Years ago I
arrived one day at Salamanca, New York, eastward
bound; must change cars there and take the sleeper
train. There were crowds of people there, and they
were swarming into the long sleeper train and pack-
ing it full, and it was a perfect purgatory of dust and
confusion and gritting of teeth and soft, sweet, and
low profanity. I asked the young man in the ticket
office if I could have a sleeping -section, and he
answered "No," with a snarl that shrivelled me up
like burned leather. I went off, smarting under this
insult to my dignity, and asked another local official,
supplicatingly, if I couldn't have some poor little
corner somewhere in a sleeping car; but he cut me
short with a venomous "No, you can't; every corner
is full. Now, don't bother me any more"; and he

154

MISTAKEN IDENTITY

turned his back and walked off. My dignity was in
a state now which cannot be described. I was so
ruffled that — well, I said to my companion, "If these
people knew who I am they — " But my companion
cut me short there — "Don't talk such folly," he said;
"if they did know who you are, do you suppose it
would help your high-mightiness to a vacancy in a
train which has no vacancies in it?"

This did not improve my condition any to speak
of, but just then I observed that the colored porter
of a sleeping car had his eye on me. I saw his dark
countenance light up. He whispered to the uni-
formed conductor, punctuating with nods and jerks
toward me, and straightway this conductor came
forward, oozing politeness from every pore.

1 ' Can I be of any service to you ? " he asked. ' ' Will
you have a place in the sleeper?"

"Yes," I said, "and much oblige me, too. Give
me anything — anything will answer."

"We have nothing left but the big family state-
room," he continued, "with two berths and a couple
of armchairs in it, but it is entirely at your disposal.
Here, Tom, take these satchels aboard!"

Then he touched his hat and we and the colored
Tom moved along. I was bursting to drop just one
little remark to my companion, but I held in and
waited. Tom made us comfortable in that sumptuous
great apartment, and then said, with many bows
and a perfect affluence of smiles :

"Now, is dey anything you want, sah? Case you
kin have jes' anything you wants. It don't make no
difference what it is."

i55

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

"Can I have some hot water and a tumbler at nine
to-night — blazing hot?" I asked. "You know about
the right temperature for a hot Scotch punch?"

"Yes, sah, dat you kin; you kin pen on it; I'll get
it myself."

"Good! Now, that lamp is hung too high. Can
I have a big coach candle fixed up just at the head
of my bed, so that I can read comfortably?"

"Yes, sah, you kin; I'll fix her up myself, an' I'll
fix her so she'll burn all night. Yes, sah; an' you can
jes' call for anything you want, and dish yer whole
railroad '11 be turned wrong end up an' inside out for
to get it for you. Dat's so." And he disappeared.

Well, I tilted my head back, hooked my thumbs in
my armholes, smiled a smile on my companion, and
said, gently:

"Well, what do you say now?"

My companion was not in the humor to respond,
and didn't. The next moment that smiling black
face was thrust in at the crack of the door, and this
speech followed :

"Laws bless you, sah, I knowed you in a minute.
I told de conduct ah so. Laws! I knowed you de
minute I sot eyes on you."

* ■ Is that so, my boy ? ' ' (Handing him a quadruple
fee.) "Who am I?"

"Jenuel McClellan, " and he disappeared again.

My companion said, vinegarishly, "Well, well!
what do you say now?" Right there comes in the
marvelous coincidence I mentioned a while ago —
viz., I was speechless, and that is my condition now.
Perceive it?

156

DALY THEATRE

Address at a Dinner After the One Hundredth Perform-
ance of "The Taming of the Shrew"

Mr. Clemens told the following story, which he incorporated
afterward in Following the Equator.

I AM glad to be here. This is the hardest theatre
in New York to get into, even at the front door.
I never got in without hard work. I am glad we
have got so far in at last. Two or three years ago I
had an appointment to meet Mr. Daly on the stage
of this theatre at eight o'clock in the evening. Well,
I got on a train at Hartford to come to New York
and keep the appointment. All I had to do was to
come to the back door of the theatre on Sixth Avenue.
I did not believe that; I did not believe it could be
on Sixth Avenue, but that is what Daly's note said —
come to that door, walk right in, and keep the
appointment. It looked very easy. It looked easy
enough, but I had not much confidence in the Sixth
Avenue door.

Well, I was kind of bored on the train, and I
bought some newspapers — New Haven newspapers —
and there was not much news in them, so I read the
advertisements. There was one advertisement of a
bench show. I had heard of bench shows, and I
often wondered what there was about them to inter-
est people. 1 had seen bench shows — lectured to

i57

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

bench shows, in fact — but I didn't want to advertise
them or to brag about them. Well, I read on a little,
and learned that a bench show was not a bench
show — but dogs, not benches at all — only dogs. I
began to be interested, and as there was nothing else
to do I read every bit of the advertisement, and
learned that the biggest thing in this show was a St.
Bernard dog that weighed one hundred and forty-
five pounds. Before I got to New York I was so
interested in the bench shows that I made up my
mind to go to one the first chance I got. Down on
Sixth Avenue, near where that back door might be,
I began to take things leisurely. I did not like to be
in too much of a hurry. There was not anything in
sight that looked like a back door. The nearest
approach to it was a cigar store. So I went in and
bought a cigar, not too expensive, but it cost enough
to pay for any information I might get and leave the
dealer a fair profit. Well, I did not like to be too
abrupt, to make the man think me crazy, by asking
him if that was the way to Daly's Theatre, so I
started gradually to lead up to the subject, asking
him first if that was the way to Castle Garden. When
I got to the real question, and he said he would show
me the way, I was astonished. He sent me through
a long hallway, and I found myself in a back yard.
Then I went through a long passageway and into a
little room, and there before my eyes was a big St.
Bernard dog lying on a bench. There was another
door beyond and I went there, and was met by a big,
fierce man with a fur cap on and coat off, who
remarked, "Phwat do yez want?" I told him I

158

DALY THEATRE

wanted to see Mr. Daly. "Yez can't see Mr. Daly
this time of night," he responded. I urged that I
had an appointment with Mr. Daly, and gave him
my card, which did not seem to impress him much.
"Yez can't get in and yez can't shmoke here. Throw
away that cigar. If yez want to see Mr. Daly,
yez '11 have to be after going to the front door and
buy a ticket, and then if yez have luck and he's
around that way yez may see him." I was getting
discouraged, but I had one resource left that had
been of good service in similar emergencies. Firmly
but kindly I told him my name was Mark Twain,
and I awaited results. There was none. He was not
fazed a bit. ' ' Phwere's your order to see Mr. Daly ? "
he asked. I handed him the note, and he examined
it intently. "My friend," I remarked, "you can
read that better if you hold it the other side up."
But he took no notice of the suggestion, and finally
asked: "Where's Mr. Daly's name?" "There it is,"
I told him, "on the top of the page." "That's all
right," he said, "that's where he always puts it; but
I don't see the 'Win his name," and he eyed me
distrustfully. Finally he asked, "Phwat do yez want
to see Mr. Daly for?" "Business." "Business?"
"Yes." It was my only hope. "Phwat kind —
theatres?" That was too much. "No." "What
kind of shows, then?" "Bench shows." It was
risky, but I was desperate. "Bench shows, is it —
where? " The big man's face changed, and he began
to look interested. "New Haven." "New Haven,
it is? Ah, that's going to be a fine show. I'm glad
to see you. Did you see a big dog in the other room ? ' '

iS9

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

1 ' Yes. " ' ' How much do you think that dog weighs ? ' '
"One hundred and forty-five pounds.' ' "Look at
that, now! He's a good judge of dogs, and no mis-
take. He weighs all of one hundred and thirty-eight.
Sit down and shmoke — go on and shmoke your cigar,
I'll tell Mr. Daly you are here." In a few minutes I
was on the stage shaking hands with Mr. Daly, and
the big man standing around glowing with satisfac-
tion. "Come around in front," said Mr. Daly, "and
see the performance. I will put you into my own
box." And as I moved away I heard my honest
friend mutter, "Well, he desarves it."

1 60

LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR
OF MARK TWAIN

Address at the First Formal Dinner in the New Club-
house, November ii, 1893

In introducing the guest of the eve ling, Mr. Lawrence said:

"To-night the old faces appear once more amid new surround-
ings. The place where last we met about the table has vanished,
and to-night we have our first Lotos dinner in a home that is all
our own. It is peculiarly fitting that the board should now be
spread in honor of one who has been a member of the club for
full a score of years, and it is a happy augury for the future that
our fellow-member whom we assemble to greet should be the
bearer of a most distinguished name in the world of letters; for
the Lotos Club is ever at its best when paying homage to genius
in literature or in art. Is there a civilized being who has not
heard the name of Mark Twain? We knew him long years ago,
before he came out of the boundless West, brimful of wit and
eloquence, with no reverence for anything, and went abroad to
educate the untutored European in the subtleties of the American
joke. The world has looked on and applauded while he has
broken many images. He has led us in imagination all over the
globe. With him as our guide we have traversed alike the Mis-
sissippi and the Sea of Galilee. At his bidding we have laughed
at a thousand absurdities. By a laborious process of reasoning
he has convinced us that the Egyptian mummies are actually
dead. He has held us spellbound upon the plain at the foot of
the great Sphinx, and we have joined him in weeping bitter
tears at the tomb of Adam. To-night we greet him in the flesh.
What name is there in literature that can be likened to his?
Perhaps some of the distinguished gentlemen about this table
can tell us, but I know of none. Himself his only parallel!"

161

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN, AND
FELLOW-MEMBERS OF THE LOTOS
CLUB, — I have seldom in my lifetime listened to
compliments so felicitously phrased or so well
deserved. I return thanks for them from a full
heart and an appreciative spirit, and I will say this
in self-defense : While I am charged with having no
reverence for anything, I wish to say that I have
reverence for the man who can utter such truths,
and I also have a deep reverence and a sincere one for a
club that can do such justice to me. To be the chief
guest of such a club is something to be envied, and if I
read your countenances rightly I am envied. I am glad
to see this club in such palatial quarters. I remember
it twenty years ago when it was housed in a stable.

Now when I was studying for the ministry there
were two or three things that struck my attention
particularly. At the first banquet mentioned in his-
tory that other prodigal son who came back from
his travels was invited to stand up and have his say.
They were all there, his brethern, David and Goliath,
and — er, and if he had had such experience as I have
had he would have waited until those other people
got through talking. He got up and testified to all
his failings. Now if he had waited before telling all
about his riotous living until the others had spoken
he might not have given himself away as he did, and
I think that I would give myself away if I should go
on. I think I'd better wait until the others hand in
their testimony ; then if it is necessary for me to make
an explanation, I will get up and explain, and if I can-
not do that, I'll deny it happened.

162

LOTUS CLUB DINNER

Later in the evening Mr. Clemens made another speech,
replying to a fire of short speeches by Charles Dudley Warner,
Charles A. Dana, Seth Low, General Porter, and many others,
each welcoming the guest of honor.

I don't see that I have a great deal to explain. I
got off very well, considering the opportunities that
these other fellows had. I don't see that Mr. Low
said anything against me, and neither did Mr. Dana.
However, I will say that I never heard so many lies
told in one evening as were told by Mr. McKelway —
and I consider myself very capable; but even in his
case, when he got through, I was gratified by finding
how much he hadn't found out. By accident he
missed the very things that I didn't want to have
said, and now, gentlemen, about Americanism.

I have been on the continent of Europe for two and
a half years. I have met many Americans there,
some sojourning for a short time only, others making
protracted stays, and it has been very gratifying to
me to find that nearly all preserved their Americanism.
I have found they all like to see the Flag fly, and that
their hearts rise when they see the Stars and Stripes.
I met only one lady who had forgotten the land of her
birth and glorified monarchical institutions.

I think it is a great thing to say that in two and a
half years I met only one person who had fallen a
victim to the shams — I think we may call them
shams — of nobilities and of heredities. She was
entirely lost in them. After I had listened to her
for a long time, I said to her: ''At least you must
admit that we have one merit. We are not like the
Chinese, who refuse to allow their citizens who are tired
of the country to leave it. Thank God, we don't ! ' '

163

AN UNDELIVERED SPEECH

The steamship St. Paul was to have been launched from Cramp's
shipyard in Philadelphia on March 25, 1895. A luncheon had
been planned at which Mr. Clemens was to make a speech. Just
before the final word was given a reporter asked Mr. Clemens for
a copy of his speech to be deliverd at the luncheon. To facilitate the
work of the reporter he loaned him a typewritten copy of the speech.
It happened, however, that when the blocks were knocked away the
big ship refused to budge, and no amount of labor could move her
an inch. She had stuck fast upon the ways. As a result, the
launching was postponed for a week or two; but in the meantime
Mr. Clemens had gone to Europe. Years after a reporter called
on Mr. Clemens and submitted the manuscript of the speech, which
was as follows:

DAY after to-morrow I sail for England in a ship
of this line, the Paris. It will be my fourteenth
crossing in three years and a half. Therefore, my
presence here, as you see, is quite natural, quite
commercial. I am interested in ships. They interest
me more now than hotels do. When a new ship is
launched I feel a desire to go and see if she will be
good quarters for me to live in, particularly if she
belongs to this line, for it is by this line that I have
done most of my ferrying.

People wonder why I go so much. Well, I go
partly for my health, partly to familiarize myself
with the road. I have gone over the same road so
many times now that I know all the whales that
belong along the route, and latterly it is an embar-
rassment to me to meet them, for they do not look

164

AN UNDELIVERED SPEECH

glad to see me, but annoyed, and they seem to say:
"Here is this old derelict again."

Earlier in life this would have pained me and made
me ashamed, but I am older now, and when I am
behaving myself, and doing right, I do not care for
a whale's opinion about me. When we are young
we generally estimate an opinion by the size of the
person that holds it, but later we find that that is
an uncertain rule, for we realize that there are times
when a hornet's opinion disturbs us more than an
emperor's.

I do not mean that I care nothing at all for a
whale's opinion, for that would be going to too great
a length. Of course, it is better to have the good
opinion of a whale than his disapproval; but my
position is that if you cannot have a whale's good
opinion, except at some sacrifice of principle or per-
sonal dignity, it is better to try to live without it.
That is my idea about whales.

Yes, I have gone over that same route so often
that I know my way without a compass, just by the
waves. I know all the large waves and a good many
of the small ones. Also the sunsets. I know every
sunset and where it belongs just by its color. Neces-
sarily, then, I do not make the passage now for
scenery. That is all gone by.

What I prize most is safety, and in the second
place swift transit and handiness. These are best
furnished by the American line, whose water-tight
compartments have no passage through them, no
doors to be left open, and consequently no way for
water to get from one of them to another in time of

165

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

collision. If you nullify the peril which collisions
threaten you with, you nullify the only very serious
peril which attends voyages in the great liners of
our day, and makes voyaging safer than staying at
home.

When the Paris was half-torn to pieces some years
ago, enough of the Atlantic ebbed and flowed through
one end of her, during her long agony, to sink the
fleets of the world if distributed among them; but
she floated in perfect safety, and no life was lost.
In time of collision the rock of Gibraltar is not safer
than the Paris and other great ships of this line.
This seems to be the only great line in the world that
takes a passenger from metropolis to metropolis
without the intervention of tugs and barges or
bridges — takes him through without breaking bulk,
so to speak.

On the English side he lands at a dock; on the
dock a special train is waiting; in an hour and three-
quarters he is in London. Nothing could be handier.
If your journey were from a sandpit on our side to
a lighthouse on the other, you could make it quicker
by other lines, but that is not the case. The journey
is from the city of New York to the city of London,
and no line can do that journey quicker than this
one> nor anywhere near as conveniently and handily.
And when the passenger lands on our side he lands
on the American side of the river, not in the provinces.
As a very learned man said on the last voyage (he
is head quartermaster of the New York and gar-
board streak of the middle watch): "When we
land a passenger on the American side there's noth-

166

AN UNDELIVERED SPEECH

ing betwixt him and his hotel but hell and the
hackman."

I am glad, with you and the nation, to welcome
the new ship. She is another pride, another consola-
tion, for a great country whose mighty fleets have all
vanished, and which has almost forgotten what it is
to fly its flag to sea. I am not sure as to which St.
Paul she is named for. Some think it is the one that
is on the upper Mississippi, but the head quarter-
master told me it was the one that killed Goliath.
But it is not important. No matter which it is, let
us give her hearty welcome and godspeed.

167

DIE SCHRECKEN DER DEUTSCHEN
SPRACHE

Address to the Vienna Press Club, November 21, 1897,
as Delivered in German

ES hat mich tief geruhrt, meine Herren, hier so
gastfreundlich empfangen zu werden, von Kol-
legen aus meinem eigenen Berufe, in diesem von
meiner eigenen Hiemath so weit entferntem Lande.
Mein Herz ist voller Daknbarkeit, aber meine Ar-
muth an deutschen Worten zwingt mich zu groszer
Sparzamkeit des Ausdruckes. Entschuldigen Sie,
meine Herren, dasz ich verlese, was ich Ihnen sagen
will. (Er las aber nicht, Anm, d. Ref .) Die deutsche
Sprache spreche ich nicht gut, doch haben mehrere
Sachverstandige mich versichert, dasz ich sie schreibe
wie ein Engel. Mag sein — Mag sein — ich weisz nicht.
Habe bis jetzt keine Behanntschaften mit Engeln
gehabt. Das kommt spater — wenn's dem lieben
Gott gefallt — es hat heine Eile.

Seit lange, meine Herren, habe ich die leiden-
schaftliche Sehnsucht gehegt, eine Rede auf Deutsch
zu halten, aber man hat mir's nie relauben wollen.
Leute, die kein Gefuhl fur die Kunst hatten, legten
mir immer Hindernissse in den Weg und vereitelten
meinen Wunsch — zuweilen durch Vorwande, haufig
durch Gewalt. Immer sagten diese Leute zu mir:
"Schweigen Sie, Ew. Hochwohlgeborne ! Ruhe, um

168

THE HORRORS OP THE GERMAN
LANGUAGE

Address to the Vienna Press Club, November 21, 1897
[A Literal Translation]

IT has me deeply touched, my gentlemen, here so
hospitably received to be. From colleagues out
of my own profession, in this from my own home so
far distant land. My heart is full of gratitude, but
my poverty of German words forces me to greater
economy of expression. Excuse you, my gentlemen,
that I read off, what I you say will. [But he didn't
read].

The German language speak I not good, but have
numerous connoisseurs me assured that I her write
like an angel. Maybe — maybe — I know not. Have
till now no acquaintance with the angels had. That
comes later — when it the dear God please — it has
no hurry.

Since long, my gentlemen, have I the passionate
longing nursed a speech on German to hold, but one
has me not permitted. Men, who no feeling for the
art had, laid me ever hindrance in the way and made
naught my desire — sometimes by excuses, often by
force. Always said these men to me: "Keep you
still, your Highness! Silence! For God's sake seek

169

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

Gotteswillen ! Suche eine andere Art und Weise,
Dich lastig zu machen."

Im jetzinger Fall, wie gewohnlich, ist es mir
schwierig geworden, mir die Erlaubniz zu verschaffen.
Das Comite bedauerte sehr, aber es konnte mir die
Erlaubnisz nicht bewilligen wegen eines Gesetzes,
das von der Concoria verlangt, sie soil die deutsche
Sprache schutzen. Du Hebe Zeit ! Wieso hatte man
mir das sagen konnen — mogen — durfen — sollen ? Ich
bin ja der treueste Freund der deutschen Sprache —
und nicht nur jetzt, sondern von lange her — ja vor
zwanzig Jahren schon. Und nie habe ich das Ver-
langen gehabt, der edlen Sprache zu schaden; im
Gegentheil, nur gewunscht, sie zu verbessern; ich
wollte sie bios reformiren. Es ist der Traum meinen
Lebens gewesen. Ich habe schon Besuche bei den
verschiedenen deutschen Regierungen abgestattet
und um Kontrakte gebeten. Ich bin jetzt nach
Oesterreich in demselben Auftrag gekommen. Ich
wurde nur einige Aenderungen anstrebun. Ichwurde
bios die Sprachmethode — die uppige, weitschweifige
Konstruktion — zusammernuchen ; die ewig Paren-
these unterdrucken, abschaffen, vernichten; die Ein-
fuhrung von mehr als driezehn Subjekten in einen
Satz verbieten; das Zeitwort so weit nach vorne
rucken, bis man es ohne Fernrohr entdechen kann.
Mit einem Wort, meine Herren, ich mochte Ihre
geliebte Sprache vereinfachen, auf dasz, meine Her-
ren, wenn Sie sie zum Gebet brauchen, nam sie dort
oben versteht.

Ich flehe Sie an, von mir sich berathen zu lassen,
fuhren Sie diese erwahnten Reformen aus. Dann

170

HORRORS OF THE GERMAN LANGUAGE

another way and means yourself obnoxious to
make."

In the present case, as usual it is me difficult
become, for me the permission to obtain. The com-
mittee sorrowed deeply, but could me the permission
not grant on account of a law which from the Con-
cordia demands she shall the German language pro-
tect. Du Hebe Zeit! How so had one to me this
say could — might — dared — should. I am indeed the
truest friend of the German language — and not only
now, but from long since — yes, before twenty years
already. And never have I the desire had the noble
language to hurt; to the contrary, only wished she
to improve — I would her only reform. It is the dream
of my life been. I have already visits by the various
German governments paid and for contracts prayed.
I am now to Austria in the same task come. I would
only some changes effect. I would only the language
method — the luxurious, elaborate construction com-
press, the eternal parenthesis suppress, do away with,
annihilate; the introduction of more than thirteen
subjects in one sentence forbid ; the verb so far to the
front pull that one it without a telescope discover
can. With one word, my gentlemen, I would your
beloved language simplify so that, my gentlemen,
when you her for prayer need, One her yonder-up
understands.

I beseech you, from me yourself counsel to let,
execute these mentioned reforms. Then will you an
elegant language possess, and afterward, when you

171

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

werden Sie eine prachtvolle Sprache besitzen und
nachher, wenn Sie Etwas sagen wollen, werden Sie
wenigstens selber verstehen, was Sie gesagt haben.
Aber ofters heutzutage, wenn Sie einen meilenlangen
Satz von sich gegeben und Sie sich etwas angelehnt
haben, urn auszuruhen, dann miissen Sie eine
ruhrende Neugierde empfmden, selbst herauszubrin-
gen, was Sie eigentlich gesprochen haben. Vor
mehreren Tagen hat der Korrespondent einerhiesigen
tung einen Satz zustande gebracht welcher hundert-
undzowlf Worte enthielt und darin waren sieben
Parenthese eingeschachtelt und es wurde Das Sub-
jekt siebenmal gewechselt. Denken Sie nur, meine
Herren, im Laufe der Reise eines einzigen Satzes
musz das arme, verfolgte, ermudete Subjekt sieben-
mal umsteigen.

Nun, wenn wir die erwahnten Reformen ausfuhren,
wird's nicht mehre so arg sein. Doch noch eins. Ich
mochte gern das trennbare Zeitwort auch ein Bischen
reformiren. Ich mochte Niemand thun lassen, was
Schiller gethan: Der hat die ganze Geschichte des
dreizigjahrigen Krieges zwischen die zwei Glieder
eines trennbaren Zeitwortes eingezwangt. Das hat
sogar Deutschland selbst emport; und man hat
Schiller die Erlaubnisz, die Geschichte des hundret
jahrigen Krieges zu verfassen — Gott sie's gedankt.
Nachdem alle diese Reformen festgestellt sein wer-
den, wird die deutsche Sprache die edelste und die
schonste auf der Welt sein.

Da Ihnen jetzt, meine Herren, der Charackter
meiner Mission behannt ist, bitte ich Sie, so freund-
lich zu sein und mir Ihre werthvolle Hilfe zu schen-

172

HORRORS OF THE GERMAN LANGUAGE

some thing say will, will you at least yourself under-
stand what you said had. But often nowadays,
when you a mile-long sentence from you given and
you yourself somewhat have rested, then must you
have a touching inquisitiveness have yourself to
determine what you actually spoken have. Before
several days has the correspondent of a local paper
a sentence constructed which hundred and twelve
words contain, and therein were seven parentheses
smuggled in, and the subject seven times changed.
Think you only, my gentlemen, in the course of the
voyage of a single sentence must the poor, persecuted,
fatigued subject seven times change position!

Now, when we the mentioned reforms execute,
will it no longer so bad be. Doch noch eins. I might
gladly the separable verb also a little bit reform. I
might none do let what Schiller did: he has the
whole history of the Thirty Years' War between the
two members of a separate verb in-pushed. That
has even Germany itself aroused, and one has Schiller
the permission refused the History of the Hundred
Years' War to compose — God be it thanked ! After
all these reforms established be will, will the Ger-
man language the noblest and the prettiest on the
world be.

Since to you now, my gentlemen, the character of
my mission known is, beseech I you so friendly to be
and to me your valuable help grant. Mr. Potzl has
the public believed make would that I to Vienna

i73

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

ken. Herr Potzl hat das Publikum glauben machen
woU'eh, dasz ich nach Wien gekommen bin, um die
Brucken zu verstopfen und den Verkehr zu hindern,
wahrend ich Beobachtungen sammle und aufziechne.
Lassen Sie sich aber nicht von ihm anfuhren. Meine
haufige Anwesenheit auf den Brucken hat einen ganz
unschuldigen Grund. Dort geibt's den nothigen
Raum. Dort kann man einen edlen, langen, deut-
schen Satz ausdehnen, die Bruckengelander entlang,
und seinen ganzen Inhalt mit einen Blick ubersehen.
Auf das eine Ende des Gelanders klebe ich das erste
Glied eines trennbaren Zeitwortes und das Schlusz-
glied klebe ich an's andere Ende — dann breite ich
den Lieb des Satzes dazwischen aus. Gewohnlich
sing fur meinen Zweck die Brucken der Stadt lang
genug : wenn ich aber Potzl 's Schrif ten studiren will,
fahe ich hinaus und benutze die herrliche unendliche
Reichsbrucke. Aber das ist eine Verleumdung. Potzl
schreibt das schonste Deutsch. Vielleicht nicht so
biegsam wie das meinige, aber in manchen Kleinig-
keiten viel besser. Entschuldigen Sie diese Schme-
icheleien. Die sind wohl verdient.

Nun bringe ich meine Rede um — nein — ich wollte
sagen, ich bringe sie zum Schlusz. Ich bin ein Frem-
der — aber hier, uter Ihnen, habe ich es ganz vergessen.
Und so, wieder, und noch wieder — biete ich Ihnen
meinen herzlichsten Dank!

i74

HORRORS OF THE GERMAN LANGUAGE

come am in order the bridges to clog up and the
traffic to hinder, while I observations gather and
note. Allow you yourselves but not from him
deceived. My frequent presence on the bridges has
an entirely innocent ground. Yonder gives it the
necessary space, yonder can one a noble long German
sentence elaborate, the bridge-railing along, and his
whole contents with one glance overlook. On the
one end of the railing pasted I the first member of
a separable verb and the final member cleave I to
the other end — then spread the body of the sentences
between it out! Usually are for my purposes the
bridges of the city long enough; when I but Potzl's
writings study will I ride out and use the glorious
endless imperial bridge. But this is a calumny;
Potzl writes the prettiest German. Perhaps not so
pliable as the mine, but in many details much better.
Excuse you these flatteries. These are well deserved.

Now I my speech execute — no, I would say I bring
her to the close. I am a foreigner — but here, under
you, have I it entirely forgotten. And so again and
yet again proffer I you my heartiest thanks."

i75

GERMAN FOR THE HUNGARIANS

Address at the Jubilee Celebration of the Emancipation
of the Hungarian Press, March 26, 1899

The Ministry and members of Parliament were present. The
subject was the "Ausgleich" — i. e., the arrangement for the appor-
tionment of the taxes between Hungary and Austria. Paragraph
14 of the ausgleich fixes the proportion each country must pay to
the support of the army. It is the paragraph which caused the
trouble and prevented renewal of the arrangement.

NOW that we are all here together, I think it
will be a good idea to arrange the ausgleich.
If you will act for Hungary I shall be quite willing
to act for Austria, and this is the very time for it.
There couldn't be a better, for we are all feeling
friendly, fair-minded, and hospitable now, and full of
admiration for each other, full of confidence in each
other, full of the spirit of welcome, full of the grace
of forgiveness, and the disposition to let bygones be
bygones.

Let us not waste this golden, this beneficent, this
providential opportunity. I am willing to make any
concession you want, just so we get it settled. I am
not only willing to let grain come in free, I am willing
to pay the freight on it, and you may send delegates
to the Reichsrath if you like. All I require is that
they shall be quiet, peaceable people like your own
deputies, and not disturb our proceedings.

If you want the Gegenseitigengeldbeitragenden-
176

GERMAN FOR THE HUNGARIANS

verhaltnismassigkeiten rearranged and readjusted I
am ready for that. I will let you of! at twenty-eight
per cent — twenty-seven — even twenty-five if you
insist, for there is nothing illiberal about me when I
am out on a diplomatic debauch.

Now, in return for these concessions, I am willing
to take anything in reason, and I think we may con-
sider the business settled and the ausgleich ausgeglo-
schen at last for ten solid years, and we will sign the
papers in blank, and do it here and now.

Well, I am unspeakably glad to have that ausgleich
off my hands. It has kept me awake nights for
anderthalbjahr.

But I never could settle it before, because always
when I called at the Foreign Office in Vienna to talk
about it, there wasn't anybody at home, and that is
not a place where you can go in and see for yourself
whether it is a mistake or not, because the person
who takes care of the front door there is of a size that
discourages liberty of action and the free spirit of
investigation. To think the ausgleich is abgemacht
at last! It is a grand and beautiful consummation,
and I am glad I came.

The way I feel now I do honestly believe I would
rather be just my own humble self at this moment
than paragraph 14.

177

TO THE WHITEFRIARS

Address at the Dinner Given by the Whitefriars ' Club
in Honor of Mr. Clemens, London, June 20, 1899

The Whitefriars' Club was founded by Dr. Samuel Johnson, and
Mr. Clemens was made an honorary member in 1874. The mem-
bers are representative of literary and journalistic London. The
toast of "Our Guest" was proposed by Louis F. Austin, of the
Illustrated London News, and in the course of some humorous
remarks he referred to the vow and to the imaginary woes of the
"Friars," as the members of the club style themselves.

MR. CHAIRMAN AND BRETHREN OF
THE VOW— in whatever the vow is; for
although I have been a member of this club for five-
and-twenty years, I don't know any more about
what that vow is than Mr. Austin seems to. But
whatever the vow is, I don't care what it is. I have
made a thousand vows.

There is no pleasure comparable to making a vow
in the presence of one who appreciates that vow, in
the presence of men who honor and appreciate you
for making the vow, and men who admire you for
making the vow.

There is only one pleasure higher than that, and
that is to get outside and break the vow. A vow is
always a pledge of some kind or other for the pro-
tection of your own morals and principles or some-
body else's, and generally by the irony of fate, it is
for the protection of your own morals.

178

TO THE WHITEFRIARS

Hence we have pledges that make us eschew
tobacco or wine, and while you are taking the pledge
there is a holy influence about that makes you feel
you are reformed, and that you can never be so
happy again in this world until — you get outside
and take a drink.

I had forgotten that I was a member of this club —
it is so long ago. But now I remember that I was
here five-and-twenty years ago, and that I was then
at a dinner of the Whitef liars' Club, and it was in
those old days when you had just made two great
finds. All London was talking about nothing else
than that they had found Livingstone, and that the
lost Sir Roger Tichborne had been found — and they
were trying him for it.

And at the dinner, Chairman (I do not know

who he was) — failed to come to time. The gentle-
man who had been appointed to pay me the cus-
tomary compliments and to introduce me forgot the
compliments, and did not know what they were.

And George Augustus Sala came in at the last
moment, just when I was about to go without com-
pliments altogether. And that man was a gifted
man. They just called on him instantaneously, while
he was going to sit down, to introduce the stranger,
and Sala made one of those marvellous speeches which
he was capable of making. I think no man talked so
fast as Sala did. One did not need wine while he was
making a speech. The rapidity of his utterance made
a man drunk in a minute. An incomparable speech
was that, an impromptu speech, and an impromptu
speech is a seldom thing, and he did it so well.

179

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

He went into the whole history of the United
States, and made it entirely new to me. He filled it
with episodes and incidents that Washington never
heard of, and he did it so convincingly that although
I knew none of it had happened, from that day to this
I do not know any history but Sala's.

I do not know anything so sad as a dinner where
you are going to get up and say something by-and-by,
and you do not know what it is. You sit and wonder
and wonder what the gentleman is going to say who
is going to introduce you. You know that if he says
something severe, that if he will deride you, or
traduce you, or do anything of that kind, he will
furnish you with a text, because anybody can get
up and talk against that.

Anybody can get up and straighten out his char-
acter. But when a gentleman gets up and merely
tells the truth about you, what can you do?

Mr. Austin has done well. He has supplied so
many texts that I will have to drop out a lot of
them, and that is about as difficult as when you do
not have any text at all. Now, he made a beautiful
and smooth speech without any difficulty at all, and
I could have done that if I had gone on with the
schooling with which I began. I see here a gentle-
man on my left who was my master in the art of
oratory more than twenty-five years ago.

When I look upon the inspiring face of Mr. Depew,
it carries me a long way back. An old and valued
friend of mine is he, and I saw his career as it came
along, and it has reached pretty well up to now,
when he, by another miscarriage of justice, is a

1 80

TO THE WHITEFRIARS

United States Senator. But those were delightful
days when I was taking lessons in oratory.

My other master — the Ambassador — is not here
yet. Under those two gentlemen I learned to make
after-dinner speeches, and it was charming.

You know the New England dinner is the great
occasion on the other side of the water. It is held
every year to celebrate the landing of the Pilgrims.
Those Pilgrims were a lot of people who were not
needed in England, and you know they had great
I rivalry, and they were persuaded to go elsewhere,
i and they chartered a ship called Mayflower and set
sail, and I have heard it said that they pumped the
Atlantic Ocean through that ship sixteen times.

They fell in over there with the Dutch from Rotter-
dam, Amsterdam, and a lot of other places with pro-
fane names, and it is from that gang that Mr. Depew
is descended.

On the other hand, Mr. Choate is descended front
those Puritans who landed on a bitter night in Decem-
ber. Every year those people used to meet at a great
banquet in New York, and those masters of mind in
oratory had to make speeches. It was Doctor
Depew's business to get up there and apologize for
the Dutch, and Mr. Choate had to get up later and
explain the crimes of the Puritans, and grand, beau-
tiful times we used to have.

It is curious that after that long lapse of time I meet
the Whitefriars again, some looking as young and fresh
as in the old days, others showing a certain amount of
wear and tear, and here, after all this time, I find one of
the masters of oratory and the other named in the list.

181

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

And here we three meet again as exiles on one
:rr:e::: :r ar.::her. ar.a y:u --ill r.::::e :ha: ~rilc ~e
ire ;.'::_-: ::' : . :- :. c.ea.5ir.g tranquillity ir. Arr.eri;
— a building up of public confidence. We are doinj
the best we can for our country. I think we have
spent our lives in serving our country, and we never
serve it to greater advantage than when we get out
of it.

But impromptu speaking — that is what I was
trying to learn. That is a difficult thing. I used to
do it in this way. I used to begin about a week
■head, ar.i --rite cut my irr.rrzrr.:::.: ;;:::':: ar. 1
it by heart. Then I brought it to the New Bngianc
dinner printed on a piece of paper in my pocket,
that I could pass it to the reporters all cut and dried,
and in order to do an impromptu speech as it shoulc
be done you have to indicate the places for pauses
and hesitations. I put them all in it. And then yot
want the applause in the right places.

When I got to the place where it should come
if it did not come in I did not care, but I had i
marked in the paper. And these masters of mine
used to wonder why it was my speech came out
the morning in the first person, while theirs went
through the butchery of synopsis.

I i: that l:ir.i ::" syee:h 1 mean ar. :5bar.d syeezh
and do it well, and make no mistake, in such a wa]
to deceive the audience completely and make thai
audience believe it is an impromptu speecri — thai
is art.

I was frightened out of it at last by an experience
of Doctor Hayes. He was a sort of Nansen of thai

:S2

TO THE WHITEFRIARS

day. He had been to the North Pole, and it made him
celebrated. He had even seen the polar bear climb
the pole.

He had made one of those magnificent voyages
such as Nansen made, and in those days when a man
did anything which greatly distinguished him for the
moment he had to come on to the lecture platform
and tell all about it.

Doctor Hayes was a great, magnificent creature
like Nansen, superbly built. He was to appear in
Boston. He WTote his lecture out, and it was his
purpose to read it from manuscript; but in an evil
hour he concluded that it would be a good thing to
preface it with something rather handsome, poetical,
and beautiful that he could get of! by heart and
deliver as if it were the thought of the moment.

He had not had my experience, and could not do
that. He came on the platform, held his manuscript
down, and began with a beautiful piece of oratory.
He spoke something like this :

"When a lonely human being, a pigmy in the
midst of the architecture of nature, stands solitary
on those icy waters and looks abroad to the horizon
and sees mighty castles and temples of eternal ice
raising up their pinnacles tipped by the pencil of the
departing sun — "

Here a man came across the platform and touched
him on the shoulder, and said: "One minute." And
then to the audience :

1 ' Is Mrs. John Smith in the house ? Her husband
has slipped on the ice and broken his leg."

And you could see the Mrs. John Smiths get up
183

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

everywhere and drift out of the house, and it made
great gaps everywhere. Then Doctor Hayes began
again: "When a lonely man, a pigmy in the archi-
tecture — " The janitor came in again and shouted:
" It lis not Mrs. John Smith ! It is Mrs. John Jones ! ' '

Then all the Mrs. Joneses got up and left. Once
more the speaker started, and was in the midst of
the sentence when he was interrupted again, and the
result was that the lecture was not delivered. But
the lecturer interviewed the janitor afterward in a
private room, and of the fragments of that janitor
they took "twelve basketsful."

Now, I don't want to sit down just in this way. I
have been talking with so much levity that I have
said no serious thing, and you are really no better
or wiser, although Robert Buchanan has suggested
that I am a person who deals in wisdom. I have said
nothing which would make you better than when
you came here.

I should be sorry to sit down without having said
one serious word which you can carry home and relate
to your children and the old people who are not able
to get away.

And this is just a little maxim which has saved me
from many a difficulty and many a disaster, and in
times of tribulation and uncertainty has come to my
rescue, as it shall to yours if you observe it as I do
day and night.

I always use it in an emergency, and you can take
it home as a legacy from me, and it is: "When in
doubt, tell the truth."

184

AUTHORS* CLUB

Address at the Dinner Given in Honor of Mr. Clemens,
London, June, 1899

Mr. Clemens was introduced by Sir Walter Besant.

IT does not embarrass me to hear my books praised
so much. It only pleases and delights me. I have
not gone beyond the age when embarrassment is pos-
sible, but I have reached the age when I know how
to conceal it. It is such a satisfaction to me to hear
Sir Walter Besant, who is much more capable than
I to judge of my work, deliver a judgment which is
such a contentment to my spirit.

Well, I have thought well of the books myself,
but I think more of them now. It charms me also
to hear Sir Spencer Walpole deliver a similar judg-
ment, and I shall treasure his remarks also. I shall
not discount the praises in any possible way. When
I report them to my family they shall lose nothing.
There are, however, certain heredities which come
down to us which our writings of the present day
may be traced to. I, for instance, read the Walpole
Letters when I was a boy. I absorbed them, gathered
in their grace, wit, and humor, and put them away
to be used by-and-by. One does that so uncon-
sciously with things one really likes. I am reminded
now of what use those letters have been to me.

185

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

They must not claim credit in America for what
was really written in another form so long ago. They
must only claim that I trimmed this, that, and the
other, and so changed their appearance as to make
them seem to be original. You now see what modesty
I have in stock. But it has taken long practice to
get it there.

But I must not stand here talking. I merely
meant to get up and give my thanks for the pleasant
things that preceding speakers have said of me. I
wish also to extend my thanks to the Authors' Club
for constituting me a member, at a reasonable price
per year, and for giving me the benefit of your legal
adviser.

I believe you keep a lawyer. I have always kept
a lawyer, too, though I have never made anything
out of him. It is service to an author to have a law-
yer. There is something so disagreeable in having a
personal contact with a publisher. So it is better to
work through a lawyer — and lose your case. I under-
stand that the publishers have been meeting together
also like us. I don't know what for, but possibly
they are devising new and mysterious ways for
remunerating authors. I only wish now to thank you
for electing me a member of this club — I believe I
have paid my dues — and to thank you again for the
pleasant things you have said of me.

186

THE DAY WE CELEBRATE

Address at the Fourth-of-July Dinner of the American
Society, London, 1899

I NOTICED in Ambassador Choate's speech that
he said: "You may be Americans or English-
men, but you cannot be both at the same time."
You responded by applause.

Consider the effect of a short residence here. I
find the Ambassador rises first to speak to a toast,
followed by a Senator, and I come third. What a
subtle tribute that to monarchical influence of the
country wjhen you place rank above respectability !

I was born modest, and if I had not been things
like this would force it upon me. I understand it
quite well. I am here to see that between them
they do justice to the day we celebrate, and in case
they do not I must do it myself. But I notice they
have considered this day merely from one side — its
sentimental, patriotic, poetic side. But it has another
side. It has a commercial, a business side that needs
reforming. It has a historical side.

I do not say "an" historical side, because I am
speaking the American language. I do not see why
our cousins should continue to say "an" hospital,
"an" historical fact, "an" horse. It seems to me
the Congress of Women, now in session, should look
to it. I think "an" is having a little too much to

187

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

do with it. It comes of habit, which accounts for
many things.

Yesterday, for example, I was at a luncheon party.
At the end of the party a great dignitary of the
English Established Church went away half an hour
before anybody else and carried off my hat. Now,
that was an innocent act on his part. He went out
first, and, of course, had the choice of hats. As a rule
I try to get out first myself. But I hold that it was
an innocent, unconscious act, due, perhaps, to hered-
ity. He was thinking about ecclesiastical matters,
and when a man is in that condition of mind he will
take anybody's hat. The result was that the whole
afternoon I was under the influence of his clerical
hat and could not tell a lie. Of course, he was hard
at it.

It is a compliment to both of us. His hat fitted
me exactly; my hat fitted him exactly. So I judge
I was born to rise to high dignity in the Church
some how or other, but I do not know what he was
born for. That is an illustration of the influence of
habit, and it is perceptible here when they say "an"
hospital, ' ' an " European, " an " historical.

The business aspect of the Fourth of July is not
perfect as it stands. See what it costs us every year
with loss of life, the crippling of thousands with its
fireworks, and the burning down of property. It is
not only sacred to patriotism and universal freedom,
but to the surgeon, the undertaker, the insurance
offices — and they are working it for all it is worth.

I am pleased to see that we have a cessation of
war for the time. This coming from me, a soldier,

188

THE DAY WE CELEBRATE

you will appreciate. I was a soldier in the Southern
war for two weeks, and when gentlemen get up to
speak of the great deeds our army and navy have
recently done, why, it goes all through me and fires
up the old war spirit. I had in my first engagement
three horses shot under me. The next shots went
over my head, the next hit me in the back- Then I
retired to meet an engagement.

I thank you, gentlemen, for making even a slight
reference to the war profession, in which I distin-
guished myself, short as my career was.

189

THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL
MORALS

The New Vagabonds Club, of London, made up of the leading
younger literary men of the day, gave a dinner in honor of Mr.
and Mrs. Clemens, July 8, 1899.

IT has always been difficult — leave that word diffi-
cult — not exceedingly difficult, but just difficult,
nothing more than that, not the slightest shade to
add to that— just difficult— to respond properly, in
the right phraseology, when compliments are paid to
me; but it is more than difficult when the compli-
ments are paid to a better than I — my wife.

And while I am not here to testify against myself —
I can't be expected to do so, a prisoner in your own
country is not admitted to do so — as to which mem-
ber of the family wrote my books, I could say in
general that really I wrote the books myself. My
wife puts the facts in, and they make it respectable.
My modesty won't suffer while compliments are being
paid to literature, and through literature to my
family. I can't get enough of them.

I am curiously situated to-night. It so rarely hap-
pens that I am introduced by a humorist; I am gen-
erally introduced by a person of grave walk and
carriage. That makes the proper background of
gravity for brightness. I am going to alter to suit,
and haply I may say some humorous things.

190

THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL MORALS

When you start with a blaze of sunshine and
upburst of humor, when you begin with that, the
proper office of humor is to reflect, to put you into
that pensive mood of deep thought, to make you
think of your sins, if you wish half an hour to fly.
Humor makes me reflect now to-night, it sets the
thinking machinery in motion. Always, when I am
thinking, there comes suggestions of what I am, and
what we all are, and what we are coming to. A
sermon comes from my lips always when I listen to
a humorous speech.

I seize the opportunity to throw away frivolities,
to say something to plant the seed, and make all
better than when I came. In Mr. Grossmith's
remarks there was a subtle something suggesting my
favorite theory of the difference between theoretical
morals and practical morals. I try to instill practical
morals in the place of theatrical — I mean theoretical ;
but as an addendum — an annex — something added
to theoretical morals.

When your chairman said it was the first time he
had ever taken the chair, he did not mean that he had
not taken lots of other things; he attended my first
lecture and took notes. This indicated the man's
disposition. There was nothing else flying around,
so he took notes; he would have taken anything he
could get.

As by the fires of experience, so by commission of
crime, you learn real morals. Commit all the crimes,
familiarize yourself with all sins, take them in rota-
tion (there are only two or three thousand of them),
stick to it. commit two or three every day, and

191

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

by-and-by you will be proof against them. When
you are through you will be proof against all sins and
morally perfect. You will be vaccinated against
every possible commission of them. This is the only
way.

I will read you a written statement upon the sub-
ject that I wrote three years ago to read to the
Sabbath schools. [Here the lecturer turned his pock-
ets out, but without success.] No! I have left it
home. Still, it was a mere statement of facts, illus-
trating the value of practical morals produced by
the commission of crime.

I was at a great school yesterday (St. Paul's),
where for four hundred years they have been busy
with brains, and building up England by producing
Pepys, Miltons, and Marlboroughs. Six hundred
boys left to nothing in the world but theoretical
morality. I wanted to become the professor of prac-
tical morality, but the high master was away, so I
suppose I shall have to go on making my living the
same old way — by adding practical to theoretical
morality.

What are the glory that was Greece, the grandeur
that was Rome, compared to the glory and grandeur
and majesty of a perfected morality such as you see
before you?

The New Vagabonds are old vagabonds (under-
going the old sort of reform). You drank my health;
I hope I have not been unuseful. Take this system
of morality to your hearts. Take it home to your
neighbors and your graves, and I hope that it will be
a long time before you arrive there.

192

HENRY IRVING

The Dramatic and Literary Society of London gave a welcome'
home dinner to Sir Henry Irving at the Savoy Hotel, London,
June q, 1900. In proposing the toast of "The Drama" Mr.
Clemens said:

I FIND my task a very easy one. I have been a
dramatist for thirty years. I have had an ambi-
tion in all that time to overdo the work of the
Spaniard who said he left behind him four hundred
dramas when he died. I leave behind me four hun-
dred and fifteen, and am not yet dead.

The greatest of all the arts is to write a drama. It
is a most difficult thing. It requires the highest
talent possible and the rarest gifts. No, there is
another talent that ranks with it — for anybody can
write a drama — I had four hundred of them — but to
get one accepted requires real ability. And I have
never had that felicity yet.

But human nature is so constructed, we are so per-
sistent, that when we know that we are born to a
thing we do not care what the world thinks about it.
We go on exploiting that talent year after year, as I
have done. I shall go on writing dramas, and some day
the impossible may happen, but I am not looking for it.

In writing plays the chief thing is novelty. The
world grows tired of solid forms in all the arts. I struck
a new idea myself years ago. I was not surprised at it.
I was always expecting it would happen . A person who
has suffered disappointment for many years loses con-

193

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

fidence, and I thought I had better make inquiries before
I exploited my new idea of doing a drama in the form
of a dream, so I wrote to a great authority on knowl-
edge of all kinds, and asked him whether it was new.

I could depend upon him. He lived in my dear
home in America — that dear home, dearer to me
through taxes. He sent me a list of plays in which
that old device had been used, and he said that there
was also a modern lot. He travelled back to China and
to a play dated two thousand six hundred years before
the Christian era. He said he would follow it up with
a list of the previous plays of the kind, and in his inno-
cence would have carried them back to the Flood.

That is the most discouraging thing that has ever
happened to me in my dramatic career. I have done
a world of good in a silent and private way, and have
furnished Sir Henry Irving with plays and plays and
plays. What has he achieved through that influence?
See where he stands now — on the summit of his art
in two worlds — and it was I who put him there — that
partly put him there.

I need not enlarge upon the influence the drama
has exerted upon civilization. It has made good
morals entertaining. I am to be followed by Mr.
Pinero. I conceive that we stand at the head of the
profession. He has not written as many plays as I
have, but he has had that God-given talent, which
I lack, of working them off on the manager. I
couple his name with this toast, and add the hope
that his influence will be supported in exercising his
masterly handicraft in that great gift, and that he
will long live to continue his fine work.

194.

LATER SPEECHES

WELCOME HOME

Address at the Dinner in His Honor at the Lotos Club,
November io, 1900

In August, 1895, just before sailing for Australia, Mr. Clemens
issued the following statement:

"It has been reported that I sacrificed, for the benefit of the
creditors, the property of the publishing firm whose financial
backer I was, and that I am now lecturing for my own benefit.

"This is an error. I intend the lectures, as well as the prop-
erty, for the creditors. The law recognizes no mortgage on a
man's brains, and a merchant who has given up all he has may
take advantage of the laws of insolvency and may start free
again for himself. But I am not a business man, and honor is
a harder master than the law. It cannot compromise for less
than one hundred cents on a dollar, and its debts are never
outlawed.

"I had a two-thirds interest in the publishing firm whose
capital I furnished. If the firm had prospered I would have
expected to collect two-thirds of the profits. As it is, I expect
to pay all the debts. My partner has no resources, and I do
not look for assistance to my wife, whose contributions in cash
from her own means have nearly equaled the claims of all
creditors combined. She has taken nothing; on the contrary,
she has helped and intends to help me to satisfy the obligations
due to the rest of the creditors.

"It is my intention to ask my creditors to accept that as a
legal discharge, and trust to my honor to pay the other fifty
per cent as fast as I can earn it. From my reception thus far
on my lecturing tour, I am confident that if I live I can pay off
the last debt within four years.

"After which, at the age of sixty-four, I can make a fresh and
unincumbered start in life. I am going to Australia, India, and
South Africa, and next year I hope to make a tour of the great
cities of the United States."

197

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

I THANK you all, out of my heart for this frater-
nal welcome, and it seems almost too fine, almost
too magnificent, for a humble Missourian such as I
am, far from his native haunts on the banks of the
Mississippi; yet my modesty is in a degree fortified
by observing that I am not the only Missourian who
has been honored here to-night, for I see at this very
table — here is a Missourian [indicating Mr. McKel-
way], and there is a Missourian [indicating Mr.
Depew], and there is another Missourian — and Hen-
drix and Clemens ; and last but not least, the greatest
Missourian of them all — here he sits — Tom Reed,
who has always concealed his birth till now. And
since I have been away I know what has been hap-
pening in his case : he has deserted politics, and now
is leading a creditable life. He has reformed, and
God prosper him; and I judge, by a remark which
he made upstairs awhile ago, that he had found a
new business that is utterly suited to his make and
constitution, and all he is doing now is that he is
around raising the average of personal beauty.

But I am grateful to the president for the kind
words which he has said of me, and it is not for me
to say whether these praises were deserved or not.
I prefer to accept them just as they stand, without
concerning myself with the statistics upon which
they have been built, but only with that large mat-
ter, that essential matter, the good-fellowship, the
kindliness, the magnanimity, and generosity that
prompted their utterance. Well, many things have
happened since I sat here before, and now that I
think of it, the president's reference to the debts

198

WELCOME HOME

which were left by the bankrupt firm of Charles L.
Webster & Co. gives me an opportunity to say a
word which I very much wish to say, not for myself,
but for ninety-five men and women whom I shall
always hold in high esteem and in pleasant remem-
brance — the creditors of that firm. They treated me
well; they treated me handsomely. There were
ninety-six of them, and by not a finger's weight did
ninety-five of them add to the burden of that time
for me. Ninety-five out of the ninety-six — they
didn't indicate by any word or sign that they were
anxious about their money. They treated me well,
and I shall not forget it; I could not forget it if I
wanted to. Many of them said, "Don't you worry,
don't you hurry " ; that's what they said. Why, if I
could have that kind of creditors always, and that
experience, I would recognize it as a personal loss
to be out of debt. I owe those ninety-five creditors a
debt of homage, and I pay it now in such measures
as one may pay so fine a debt in mere words. Yes,
they said that very thing. I was not personally
acquainted with ten of them, and yet they said,
"Don't you worry, and don't you hurry." I know
that phrase by heart, and if all the other music should
perish out of the world it would still sing to me. I
appreciate that ; I am glad to say this word ; people
say so much about me, and they forget those cred-
itors. They were handsomer than I was — or Tom
Reed.

Oh, you have been doing many things in this time
that I have been absent; you have done lots of
things, some that are well worth remembering, too.

199

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

Now, we have fought a righteous war since I have
gone, and that is rare in history — a righteous war is
so rare that it is almost unknown in history; but by
the grace of that war we set Cuba free, and we joined
her to those three or four nations that exist on this
earth ; and we started out to set those poor Filipinos
free, too, and why, why, why that most righteous
purpose of ours has apparently miscarried I suppose
I never shall know.

But we have made a most creditable record in
China in these days — our sound and level-headed
administration has made a most creditable record
over there, and there are some of the Powers that
cannot say that by any means. The Yellow Terror
is threatening this world to-day. It is looming vast
and ominous on that distant horizon. I do not know
what is going to be the result of that Yellow Terror,
but our government has had no hand in evoking it,
and let's be happy in that and proud of it.

We have nursed free silver, we watched by its
cradle ; we have done the best we could to raise that
child, but those pestiferous Republicans have — well,
they keep giving it the measles every chance they
get, and we never shall raise that child. Well, that's
no matter — there's plenty of other things to do, and
we must think of something else. Well, we have
tried a President four years, criticised him and found
fault with him the whole time, and turned around
a day or two ago with votes enough to spare to elect
another. O consistency! consistency! thy name — I
don't know what thy name is — Thompson will do —
any name will do — but you see there is the fact,

200

WELCOME HOME

there is the consistency. Then we have tried for
governor an illustrious Rough Rider, and we liked
him so much in that great office that now we have
made him Vice-President — not in order that that
office shall give him distinction, but that he m ay-
confer distinction upon that office. And it's needed,
too — it's needed. And now, for a while anyway, we
shall not be stammering and embarrassed when a
stranger asks us, "What is the name of the Vice-
President?" This one is known; this one is pretty
well known, pretty widely known, and in some
quarters favorably. I am not accustomed to deal-
ing in these fulsome compliments, and I am probably
overdoing it a little; but — well, my old affectionate
admiration for Governor Roosevelt has probably
betrayed me into the complimentary excess; but I
know him, and you know him; and if you give him
rope enough — I mean if — oh yes, he will justify that
compliment ; leave it just as it is. And now we have
put in his place Mr. Odell, another Rough Rider, I
suppose ; all the fat things go to that profession now.
Why, I could have been a Rough Rider myself if I
had known that this political Klondike was going to
open up, and I would have been a Rough Rider if I
could have gone to war on an automobile — but not
on a horse! No, I know the horse too well; I have
known the horse in war and in peace, and there is
no place where a horse is comfortable. The horse
has too many caprices, and he is too much given to
initiative. He invents too many new ideas. No, I
don't want anything to do with a horse.
And then we have taken Chauncey Depew out of
201

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

a useful and active life and made him a Senator
— embalmed him, corked him up. And I am not
grieving. That man has said many a true thing
about me in his time, and I always said something
would happen to him. Look at that [pointing to
Mr. Depew] gilded mummy! He has made my life
a sorrow to me at many a banquet on both sides of
the ocean, and now he has got it. Perish the hand
that pulls that cork !

All these things have happened, all these things
have come to pass, while I have been away, and it
just shows how little a Mugwump can be missed in a
cold, unfeeling world, even when he is the last one
that is left — a Grand Old Party all by himself.
And there is another thing that has happened, per-
haps the most imposing event of them all : the insti-
tution called the Daughters of the Crown — the
Daughters of the Royal Crown — has established itself
and gone into business. Now, there's an American
idea for you; there's an idea born of God knows
what kind of specialized insanity, but not softening
of the brain — you cannot soften a thing that doesn't
exist — the Daughters of the Royal Crown ! Nobody
eligible but American descendants of Charles II.
Dear me, how the fancy product of that old harem
still holds out !

Well, I am truly glad to foregather with you again,
and partake of the bread and salt of this hospitable
house once more. Seven years ago, when I was your
guest here, when I was old and despondent, you gave
me the grip and the word that lift a man up and
make him glad to be alive; and now I come back

202

WELCOME HOME

from my exile young again, fresh and alive, and re'ady
to begin life once more, and your welcome puts the
finishing touch upon my restored youth and makes
it real to me, and not a gracious dream that must
vanish with the morning. I thank you.

203

GALVESTON ORPHAN BAZAAR

Address at a Fair Held at the Waldorf-Astoria, New

York, in October, 1900, in Add oe the

Orphans at Galveston

I EXPECTED that the Governor of Texas would
occupy this place first and would speak to you,
and in the course of his remarks would drop a text
for me to talk from ; but with the proverbial obsti-
nacy that is proverbial with governors, they go back
on their duties, and he has not come here, and has
not furnished me with a text, and I am here without
a text. I have no text except what you furnish me
with your handsome faces, and — but I won't con-
tinue that, for I could go on forever about attractive
faces, beautiful dresses, and other things. But, after
all, compliments should be in order in a place like
this.

I have been in New York two or three days, and
have been in a condition of strict diligence night and
day, the object of this diligence being to regulate
the moral and political situation on this planet — put
it on a sound basis — and when you are regulating
the conditions of a planet it requires a great deal of
talk in a great many kinds of ways, and when you
have talked a lot the emptier you get. When I am
situated like that, with nothing to say, I feel as
though I were a sort of fraud ; I seem to be playing
a part, and please consider I am playing a part for

204

GALVESTON ORPHAN BAZAAR

want of something better, and this is not unfamiliar
to me; I have often done this before.

When I was here about eight years ago I was com-
ing up in a car of the elevated road. Very few people
were in that car, and on one end of it there was no
one, except on the opposite seat, where sat a man
about fifty years old, with a most winning face and
an elegant eye — a beautiful eye; and I took him
from his dress to be a master mechanic, a man who
had a vocation. He had with him a very fine little
child of about four or five years. I was watching
the affection which existed between those two. I
judged he was the grandfather, perhaps. It was
really a pretty child, and I was admiring her, and
as soon as he saw I was admiring her he began to
notice me.

I could see his admiration of me in his eye, and I
did what everybody else would do — admired the
child four times as much, knowing I would get four
times as much of his admiration. Things went on
very pleasantly. I was making my way into his
heart.

By^and-by, when he almost reached the station
where he was to get off, he got up, crossed over, and
he said : ' ' Now I am going to say something to you
which I hope you will regard as a compliment."
And then he went on to say: "I have never seen
Mark Twain, but I have seen a portrait of him, and
any friend of mine will tell you that when I have
once seen a portrait of a man I place it in my eye and
store it away in my memory, and I can tell you now
that you look enough like Mark Twain to be his

205

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

brother. Now," he said, "I hope you take this as
a compliment."

I said : "I will be frank with you. In my desire to
look like that excellent character I have dressed for
the character; I have been playing a part."

He said: "That is all right, that is all right; you
look very well on the outside, but when it comes to
to the inside you are probably not in it with the
original."

So when I come to a place like this with nothing
valuable to say I always play a part. But I will
say before I sit down that when it comes to saying
anything here I will express myself in this way : I am
heartily in sympathy with you in your efforts to
help those who were sufferers in this calamity, and
in your desire to help those who were rendered home-
less, and in saying this I wish to impress on you the
fact that I am not playing a part.

206

LITERATURE

Address at the Royal Literary Fund Banquet, London,

May 4, 1900

Anthony Hope introduced Mr. Clemens to make the response to
the toast "Literature."

MR. HOPE has been able to deal adequately
with this toast without assistance from me.
Still, I was born generous. If he had advanced any
theories that needed refutation or correction I would
have attended to them, and if he had made any state-
ments stronger than those which he is in the habit
of making I would have dealt with them.

In fact, I was surprised at the mildness of his state-
ments. I could not have made such statements if I
had preferred to, because to exaggerate is the only
way I can approximate to the truth. You cannot
have a theory without principles. Principles is
another name for prejudices. I have no prejudices
in politics, religion, literature, or anything else.

I am now on my way to my own country to run
for the presidency because there are not yet enough
candidates in the field, and those who have entered
are too much hampered by their own principles,
which are prejudices.

I propose to go there to purify the political atmos-
phere. I am in favor of everything everybody is in
favor of. What you should do is to satisfy the

207

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

whole nation, not half of it, for then you would only
be half a President.

There could not be a broader platform than mine.
I am in favor of anything and everything — of tem-
perance and intemperance, morality and qualified
immorality, gold standard and free silver.

I have tried all sorts of things, and that is why I
want to try the great position of ruler of a count ry.
I have been in turn reporter, editor, publisher,
author. Lawyer, burglar, I have worked my way up,
and wish to continue to do so.

I read to-day in a magazine article that Christen-
dom issued last year fifty-five thousand new books.
Consider what that means! Fifty-five thousand new
books meant fifty -four thousand new authors. We
are going to have them all on our hands to take care
of sooner or later. Therefore, double your subscrip-
tions to the literary fund!

208

DISAPPEARANCE OP LITERATURE

Address at the Dinner of the Nineteenth Century Club,
at Sherry's, New York, November 20, 1900

Mr. Clemens spoke to the toast "The Disappearance of Liter-
ature." Doctor Gould presided, and in introducing Mr. Clemens
said that he {the speaker), when in Germany, had to do a lot of
apologizing for a certain literary man who was taking what the
Germans thought undue liberties with their language.

IT wasn't necessary for your chairman to apologize
for me in Germany. It wasn't necessary at all.
Instead of that he ought to have impressed upon
those poor benighted Teutons the service I rendered
them. Their language had needed untangling for a
good many years. Nobody else seemed to want to
take the job, and so I took it, and I flatter myself
that I made a pretty good job of it. The Germans
have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs.
Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this
world when it's all together. It's downright inhuman
to split it up. But that's just what those Germans
do. They take part of a verb and put it down here,
like a stake, and they take the other part of it and
put it away over yonder like another stake, and
between these two limits they just shovel in German.
I maintain that there is no necessity for apologizing
for a man who helped in a small way to stop such
mutilation.

We have heard a discussion to-night on the disap-
209

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

pearance of literature. That's no new thing. That's
what certain kinds of literature have been doing foi
several years. The fact is, my friend, that the fashion
in literature changes, and the literary tailors have to
change their cuts or go out of business. Professor
Winchester here, if I remember fairly correctly what
he said, remarked that few, if any, of the novels
produced to-day would live as long as the novels of
Walter Scott. That may be his notion. Maybe he
is right ; but so far as I am concerned, I don't care
if they don't.

Professor Winchester also said something about
there being no modern epics like Paradise Lost. I
guess he's right. He talked as if he was pretty
familiar with that piece of literary work, and nobody
would suppose that he never had read it. I don't
believe any of you have ever read Paradise Lost, and
you don't want to. That's something that you just
want to take on trust. It's a classic, just as Professor
Winchester says, and it meets his definition of a
classic — something that everybody wants to have
read and nobody wants to read.

Professor Trent also had a good deal to say about
the disappearance of literature. He said that Scott
would outlive all his critics. I guess that's true.
The fact of the business is, you've got to be one of
two ages to appreciate Scott. When you're eighteen
you can read Ivanhoe, and you want to wait until
you are ninety to read some of the rest. It takes a
pretty well-regulated abstemious critic to live ninety
years.

2IO

PUBLIC EDUCATION ASSOCIATION

Address at a Meeting of the Berkeley Lyceum, New York,
November 23, 1900

I DON'T suppose that I am called here as an
expert on education, for that would show a lack
of foresight on your part and a deliberate intention
to remind me of my shortcomings.

As I sat here looking around for an idea it struck
me that I was called for two reasons. One was to do
good to me, a poor unfortunate traveller on the
world's wide ocean, by giving me a knowledge of
the nature and scope of your society and letting me
know that others beside myself have been of some
use in the world. The other reason that I can see
is that you have called me to show by way of con-
trast what education can accomplish if administered
in the right sort of doses.

Your worthy president said that the school pic-
tures, which have received the admiration of the
world at the Paris Exposition, have been sent to
Russia, and this was a compliment from that Gov-
ernment — which is very surprising to me. Why, it
is only an hour since I read a cablegram in the news-
papers beginning "Russia Proposes to Retrench." I
was not expecting such a thunderbolt, and I thought
what a happy thing it will be for Russians when the
retrenchment will bring home the thirty thousand

211

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

Russian troops now in Manchuria, to live in peaceful
pursuits. I thought this was what Germany should
do also without delay, and that France and all the
other nations in China should follow suit.

Why should not China be free from the foreigners,
who are only making trouble on her soil? If they
would only go home, what a pleasant place China
would be for the Chinese! We do not allow China-
men to come here, and I say in all seriousness that
it would be a graceful thing to let China decide who
shall go there.

China never wanted foreigners any more than for-
eigners wanted Chinamen, and on this question I
am with the Boxers every time. The Boxer is a
patriot. He loves his country better than he does
the countries of other people. I wish him success.
The Boxer believes in driving us out of his country.
I am a Boxer, too, for I believe in driving him out of
our country.

When I read the Russian despatch further my
dream of world peace vanished. It said that the
vast expense of maintaining the army had made it
necessary to retrench, and so the Government had
decided that to support the army it would be neces-
sary to withdraw the appropriation from the public
schools. This is a monstrous idea to us. We believe
that out of the public school grows the greatness of
a nation.

It is curious to reflect how history repeats itself
the world over. Why, I remember the same thing
was done when I was a boy on the Mississippi River.
There was a proposition in a township there to dis-

212

PUBLIC EDUCATION ASSOCIATION

continue public schools because they were too expen-
sive. An old farmer spoke up and said if they stopped
the schools they would not save anything, because
every time a school was closed a jail had to be built.

It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. He'll never
get fat. I believe it is better to support schools than
jails.

The work of your association is better and shows
more wisdom than the Czar of Russia and all his
people. This is not much of a compliment, but it's
the best I've got in stock.

213

MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT

Address at the Annual Dinner of the St. Nicholas Society,
New York, December 6, 1900

Doctor Mackay, in his response to the toast "St. Nicholas"
referred to Mr. Clemens, saying: "Mark Twain is as true a
preacher of true righteousness as any bishop, priest, or minister
of any church to-day, because he moves men to forget their faults
by cheerful well doing instead of making them sour and morbid
by everlasting bending their attention to the seamy and sober side
of lifer

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF
THE ST. NICHOLAS SOCIETY— These
are, indeed, prosperous days for me. Night before
last, in a speech, the Bishop of the Diocese of New
York complimented me for my contribution to the-
ology, and to-night the Reverend Doctor Mackay
has elected me to the ministry. I thanked Bishop
Potter then for his compliment, and I thank Doctor
Mackay now for that promotion. I think that both
have discerned in me what I long ago discerned, but
what I was afraid the world would never learn to
recognize.

In this absence of nine years I find a great improve-
ment in the city of New York. I am glad to speak
on that as a toast — ''The City of New York." Some
say it has improved because I have been away.
Others, and I agree with them, say it has improved
because I have come back. We must judge of a

214

MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT

city, as of a man, by its external appearances and by
its inward character. In externals the foreigner com-
ing to these shores is more impressed at first by our
skyscrapers. They are new to him. He has not
done anything of the sort since he built the tower
of Babel. The foreigner is shocked by them.

In the daylight they are ugly. They are — well, too
chimneyfied and too snaggy — like a mouth that needs
attention from a dentist ; like a cemetery that is all
monuments and no gravestones. But at night, seen
from the river where they are columns towering
against the sky, all sparkling with light, they are
fairylike; they are beauty more satisfactory to the
soul and more enchanting than anything that man
has dreamed of since the Arabian nights. We can't
always have the beautiful aspect of things. Let us
make the most of our sights that are beautiful and
let the others go. When your foreigner makes dis-
agreeable comments on New York by daylight, float
him down the river at night.

What has made these skyscrapers possible is the
elevator. The cigar box which the European calls a
"lift" needs but to be compared with our elevators
to be appreciated. The lift stops to reflect between
floors. That is all right in a hearse, but not in
elevators. The American elevator acts like the man's
patent purge — it worked. As the inventor said,
"This purge doesn't waste any time fooling around;
it attends strictly to business."

That New Yorkers have the cleanest, quickest,
and most admirable system of street railways in the
world has been forced upon you by the abnormal

215

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

appreciation you have of your hackman. We ought
always to be grateful to him for that service. Nobody
else would have brought such a system into existence
for us. We ought to build him a monument. We
owe him one as much as we owe one to anybody.
Let it be a tall one. Nothing permanent, of course;
build it of plaster, say. Then gaze at it and realize
how grateful we are — for the time being — and then
pull it down and throw it on the ash heap. That's
the way to honor your public heroes.

As to our streets, I find them cleaner than they
used to be. I miss those dear old landmarks, the
symmetrical mountain ranges of dust and dirt that
used to be piled up along the streets for the wind and
rain to tear down at their pleasure. Yes, New York
is cleaner than Bombay. I realize that I have been
in Bombay, that I now am in New York; that it is
not my duty to flatter Bombay, but rather to flatter
New York.

Compared with the wretched attempts of London
to light that city, New York may fairly be said to be
a well-lighted city. Why, London's attempt at good
lighting is almost as bad as London's attempt at
rapid transit. There is just one good system of rapid
transit in London — the "Tube," and that, of course,
had been put in by Americans. Perhaps, after
a while, those Americans will come back and give New
York also a good underground system. Perhaps they
have already begun. I have been so busy since I
came back that I haven't had time as yet to go down
cellar.

But it is by the laws of the city, it is by the manners

216

MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT

of the city, it is by the ideals of the city, it is by th*
customs of the city and by the municipal govern-
ment which all these elements correct, support, and
foster, by which the foreigner judges the city. It is
by these that he realizes that New York may, indeed,
hold her head high among the cities of the world.
It is by these standards that he knows whether to
class the city higher or lower than the other muni-
cipalities of the world.

Gentlemen, you have the best municipal govern-
ment in the world — the purest and the most fragrant.
The very angels envy you, and wish they could estab-
lish a government like it in heaven. You got it by
a noble fidelity to civic duty. You got it by stern
and ever-watchful exertion of the great powers with
which you are charged by the rights which were
handed down to you by your forefathers, by your
manly refusal to let base men invade the high places
of your government, and by mstant retaliation when
any public officer has insulted you in the city's
name by swerving in the slightest from the upright
and full performance of his duty. It is you who have
made this city the envy of the cities of the world.
God will bless you for it — God will bless you for it.
Why, when you approach the final resting place the
angels of heaven will gather at the gates and cry out:

"Here they come! Show them to the archangel's
box, and turn the limelight on them!"

217

MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION

Address at the City Club Dinner, January 4, 1901

Bishop Potter told how an alleged representative of Tammany
Ball asked him in effect if he would cease his warfare upon the
Police Department if a certain captain and inspector were dis-
missed. He replied that he would never be satisfied until the "man
at the top" and the "system" which permitted evils in the Police
Department were crushed.

THE Bishop has just spoken of a condition of
things which none of us can deny, and which
ought not to exist; that is, the lust of gain — a lust
which does not stop short of the penitentiary or the
jail to accomplish its ends. But we may be sure of
one thing, and that is that this sort of thing is not
universal. If it were, this country would not be.
You may put this down as a fact : that out of every
fifty men, forty-nine are clean. Then why is it, you
may ask, that the forty-nine don't have things the
way they want them? I'll tell you why it is. A
good deal has been said here to-night about what is
to be accomplished by organization. That's just
the thing. It's because the fiftieth fellow and his
pals are organized and the other forty-nine are not
that the dirty one rubs it into the clean fellows every
time.

You may say organize, organize, organize; but
there may be so much organization that it will inter-
fere with the work to be done. The Bishop here

2l8

MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION

had an experience of that sort, and told all about it
downtown the other night. He was painting a
barn — it was his own bam — and yet he was informed
that his work must step ; he. was a nonunion painter,
and couldn't continue at that sort of job.

Now, all these conditions of which you complain
should be remedied, and I am here to tell you just
how to do it. I've been a statesman without salary
for many years, and I have accomplished great and
widespread good. I don't know that it has benefited
anybody very much, even if it was good; but I do
know that it hasn't harmed me very much, and it
hasn't made me any richer.

We hold the balance of power. Put up your best
men for office, and we shall support the better one.
With the election of the best man for Mayor would
follow the selection of the best man for Police Com-
missioner and Chief of Police.

My first lesson in the craft of statesmanship was
taken at an early age. Fifty-one years ago I was
fourteen years old, and we had a society in the town
I lived in, patterned after the Freemasons, or the
Ancient Order of United Farmers, or some such
thing — just what it was patterned after doesn't mat-
ter. It had an inside guard and an outside guard,
and a past grand warden, and a lot of such things,
so as to give dignity to the organization and offices
to the members.

Generally speaking it was a pretty good sort of
organization, and some of the very best boys in the
village, including — but I mustn't get personal on an
occasion like this — and the society would have got

219

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

along pretty well had it not been for the fact that
there were a certain number of the members who
could be bought. They got to be an infernal nuisance.
Every time we had an election the candidates had
to go around and see the purchasable members.
The price per vote was paid in doughnuts, and it
depended somewhat on the appetites of the individ-
uals as to the price of the votes.

This thing ran along until some of us, the really
very best boys in the organization, decided that these
corrupt practices must stop, and for the purpose of
stopping them we organized a third party. We had
a name, but we were never known by that name.
Those who didn't like us called us the Anti-Doughnut
party, but we didn't mind that.

We said: "Call us what you please; the name
doesn't matter. We are organized for a principle."
By-and-by the election came around, and we made
a big mistake. We were triumphantly beaten. That
taught us a lesson. Then and there we decided
never again to nominate anybody for anything. We
decided simply to force the other two parties in the
society to nominate their very best men. Although
we were organized for a principle, we didn't care
much about that. Principles aren't of much account
anyway, except at election time. After that you j
hang them up to let them season.

The next time we had an election we told both
the other parties that we'd beat any candidates put
up by any one of them of whom we didn't approve.
In that election we did business. We got the man
we wanted. I suppose they called us the Anti-

220

MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION

Doughnut party because they couldn't buy us with
their doughnuts. They didn't have enough of them.
Most reformers arrive at their price sooner or later,
and I suppose we would have had our price; but
our opponents weren't offering anything but dough-
nuts, and those we spurned.

Now it seems to me that an Anti-Doughnut party
is just what is wanted in the present emergency. I
would have the An ti- Doughnuts felt in every city
and hamlet and school district in this State and in
the United States. I was an Anti-Doughnut in my
boyhood, and I'm an Anti-Doughnut still. The
modern designation is Mugwump. There used to
be quite a number of us Mugwumps, but I think
I'm the only one left. I had a vote this fall, and I
began to make some inquiries as to what I had
better do with it.

I don't know anything about finance, and I never
did, and I know some pretty shrewd financiers, and
they told me that Mr. Bryan wasn't safe on any
financial question. I said to myself, then, that it
wouldn't do for me to vote for Bryan, and I rather
thought — I know now — that McKinley wasn't just
right on this Philippine question, and so I just didn't
vote for anybody. I've got that vote yet, and I've
kept it clean, ready to deposit at some other election.
It wasn't cast for any wildcat financial theories, and
it wasn't cast to support the man who sends our
boys as volunteers out into the Philippines to get
shot down under a polluted flag.

221

VOTES FOR WOMEN

At the Annual Meeting of the Hebrew Technical School

for Girls, Held in the Temple Emmanuel,

January 20, 1901

Mr. Clemens was introduced by President Meyer, who said:
u In one of Mr. Clemens' s works he expressed his opinion of men,
saying he had no choice between Hebrew and Gentile, black men
or white; to him all men were alike. But I never could find that
he expressed his opinion of women; perhaps that opinion was so
exalted that he could not express it. We shall now be called to hear
what he thinks of women."

IADIES AND GENTLEMEN— It is a small help
^j that I can afford, but it is just such help that
one can give as coming from the heart through the
mouth. The report of Mr. Meyer was admirable,
and I was as interested in it as you have been. Why,
I'm twice as old as he, and I've had so much experi-
ence that I would say to him, when he makes his
appeal for help: "Don't make it for to-day or
to-morrow, but collect the money on the spot."

We are all creatures of sudden impulse. We must
be worked up by steam, as it were. Get them to
write their wills now, or it may be too late by-and-
by. Fifteen or twenty years ago I had an experience
I shall never forget. I got into a church which was
crowded by a sweltering and panting multitude. The
city missionary of our town — Hartford — made a tell-
ing appeal for help. He told of personal experiences
among the poor in cellars and top lofts requiring

222

VOTES FOR WOMEN

instances of devotion and help. The poor are always
good to the poor. When a person with his millions
gives a hundred thousand dollars it makes a great
noise in the world, but he does not miss it; it's the
widow's mite that makes no noise but does the best
work.

I remembered on that occasion in the Hartford
church the collection was being taken up. The
appeal had so stirred me that I could hardly wait
for the hat or plate to come my way. I had four
hundred dollars in my pocket, and I was anxious to
drop it in the plate and wanted to borrow more.
But the plate was so long in coming my way that
the fever-heat of beneficence was going down lower
and lower — going down at the rate of a hundred dol-
lars a minute. The plate was passed too late. When
it finally came to me, my enthusiasm had gone down
so much that I kept my four hundred dollars — and
stole a dime from the plate. So, you see, time some-
times leads to crime.

Oh, many a time have I thought of that and
regretted it, and I adjure you all to give while the
fever is on you.

Referring to woman's sphere in life, I'll say that
woman is always right. For twenty-five years I've
been a woman's rights man. I have always believed,
long before my mother died, that, with her gray
hairs and admirable intellect, perhaps she knew as
much as I did. Perhaps she knew as much about
voting as I.

I should like to see the time come when women
shall help to make the laws. I should like to see that

223

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

whip-lash, the ballot, in the hands of women. As for
this city's government, I don't want to say much,
except that it is a shame — a shame; but if I should
live twenty-five years longer — and there is no reason
why I shouldn't — I think I'll see women handle the
ballot. If women had the ballot to-day, the state of
things in this town would not exist.

If all the women in this town had a vote to-day
they would elect a mayor at the next election, and
they would rise in their might and change the awful
state of things now existing here.

224

UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT SOCIETY

After the serious addresses were made, Seth Low introduced Mr.
Clemens at the Settlement House, February 2, 1901.

THE older we grow the greater becomes our
wonder at how much ignorance one can contain
without bursting one's clothes. Ten days ago I did
not know anything about the University Settlement
except what I'd read in the pamphlets sent me. Now,
after being here and hearing Mrs. Hewitt and Mrs.
Thomas, it seems to me I know of nothing like it at
all. It's a charity that carries no humiliation with
it. Marvellous it is, to think of schools where you
don't have to drive the children in but drive them
out. It was not so in my day.

Down-stairs just now I saw a dancing lesson going
on. You must pay a cent for a lesson. You can't
get it for nothing. That's the reason I never learned
to dance.

But it was the pawnbroker's shop you have here
that interested me mightily. I've known something
about pawnbrokers' shops in my time, but here you
have a wonderful plan. The ordinary pawnbroker
charges thirty-six per cent a year for a loan, and I've
paid more myself, but here a man or woman in dis-
tress can obtain a loan for one per cent a month!
It's wonderful!

I've been interested in all I've heard to-day, espe-
225

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

daily in the romance recounted by Mrs. Thomas,
which reminds me that I have a romance of my own
in my autobiography, which I am building for the
instruction of the world.

In San Francisco, many years ago, when I was a
newspaper reporter (perhaps I should say I had been
and was willing to be), a pawnbroker was taking care
of what property I had. There was a friend of mine,
a poet, out of a job, and he was having a hard time
of it, too.

Well, my friend the poet thought his life was a
failure, and I told him I thought it was, and then he
said he thought he ought to commit suicide, and I
said "all right," which was disinterested advice to a
friend in trouble; but, like all such advice, there was
just a little bit of self-interest back of it, for if I
could get a "scoop" on the other newspapers I
could get a job.

The poet could be spared, and so, largely for his
own good and partly for mine, I kept the thing in his
mind, which was necessary, as would-be suicides are
very changeable and hard to hold to their purpose.
He had a preference for a pistol, which was an extrav-
agance, for we hadn't enough between us to hire a
pistol. A fork would have been easier.

And so he concluded to drown himself, and I said
it was an excellent idea — the only trouble being that
he was so good a swimmer. So we went down to the
beach. I went along to see that the thing was done
right. Then something most romantic happened.
There came in on the sea something that had been
on its way for three years. It rolled in across the

226

UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT SOCIETY

broad Pacific with a message that was full of mean-
ing to that poor poet and cast itself at his feet. It
was a life preserver ! This was a complication. And
then I had an idea — he never had any, especially
when he was going to write poetry ; I suggested that
we pawn the life preserver and get a revolver.

The pawnbroker gave us an old derringer with a
bullet as big as a hickory nut. When he heard that
it was only a poet that was going to kill himself he
did not quibble. Well, we succeeded in sending a
bullet right through his head. It was a terrible
moment when he placed that pistol against his fore-
head and stood for an instant. I said, "Oh, pull the
trigger!" and he did, and cleaned out all the gray
matter in his brains. It carried the poetic faculty
away, and now he's a useful member of society.

Now, therefore, I realize that there's no more
beneficent institution than this penny fund of yours,
and I want all the poets to know this. I did think
about writing you a check, but now I think I'll send
you a few copies of what one of your little members
called Strawberry Finn.

227

ON LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY

Introducing Col. Waiter son at the celebration of Abraham Lincoln's
Q2d Birthday Anniversary, Carnegie Hall, February n, 1901, to
raise funds for the Lincoln Memorial University at Cumberland
Gap, Tennessee.

1ADIES AND GENTLEMEN— The remainder
j of my duties as presiding chairman here this
evening are but two — only two. One of them is easy,
and the other difficult. That is to say, I must intro-
duce the orator, and then keep still and give him a
chance. The name of Henry Watterson carries with
it its own explanation. It is like an electric light on
top of Madison Square Garden; you touch the but-
ton and the light flashes up out of the darkness.
You mention the name of Henry Watterson, and
your minds are at once illuminated with the splendid
radiance of his fame and achievements. A journalist,
a soldier, an orator, a statesman, a rebel. Yes, he
was a rebel; and, better still, now he is a recon-
structed rebel.

It is a curious circumstance that without collusion
of any kind, but merely in obedience to a strange
and pleasant and dramatic freak of destiny, he and
I, kinsmen by blood, 1 for we are that — and one-
time rebels — for we were that — chosen out of a mil-
lion surviving quondam rebels to come here and

1 Colonel Watterson's forbears had intermarried with the Lamp-
tons, Mark Twain's maternal ancestors.

228

ON LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY

bare our heads in reverence and love of that noble
soul whom forty years ago we tried with all our
hearts and all our strength to defeat and dispos-
sess — Abraham Lincoln! Is the Rebellion ended
and forgotten? Are the Blue and the Gray one
to-day? By authority of this sign we may answer
yes; there was a Rebellion — that incident is closed.
I was born and reared in a slave state; my father
was a slave owner; and in the Civil War I was a
second lieutenant in the Confederate service. For
a while. This second cousin of mine, Colonel Wat-
terson, the orator of this present occasion, was born
and reared in a slave state, was a colonel in the
Confederate service, and rendered me such assist-
ance as he could in my self-appointed task of anni-
hilating the Federal armies and breaking up the
Union. I laid my plans with wisdom and foresight,
and if Colonel Watterson had obeyed my orders 1
should have succeeded in my giant undertaking. It
was my intention to drive General Grant into the
Pacific: — if I could get transportation — and I told
Colonel Watterson to surround the Eastern armies
and wait till I came. But he was insubordinate and
stood upon a punctilio of military etiquette; he
refused to take orders from a second lieutenant —
and the Union was saved. This is the first time this
secret has been revealed. Until now no one outside
the family has known the facts. But there they
stand — Watterson saved the Union. Yet to this day
that man gets no pension. Those were great days,
splendid days. What an uprising it was! For the
hearts of the whole nation, North and South, were

229

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

in the war. We of the South were not ashamed ; for,
like the men of the North, we were fighting for flags
we loved; and when men fight for these things, and
under these convictions, with nothing sordid to
tarnish their cause, that cause is holy, the blood
spilled for it is sacred, the life that is laid down for
it is consecrated. To-day we no longer regret the
result, to-day we are glad that it came out as it did,
but we are not ashamed that we did our endeavor;
we did our bravest best, against despairing odds,
for the cause which was precious to us and which
our conscience approved; and we are proud — and
you are proud — the kindred blood in your veins
answers when I say it — you are proud of the record
we made in those mighty collisions in the fields.

What an uprising it was! We did not have to
supplicate for soldiers on either side. "We are com-
ing, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand
strong!" That was the music North and South.
The very choicest young blood and brawn and brain
rose up from Maine to the Gulf and flocked to the
standards — just as men always do when in their eyes
their cause is great and fine and their hearts are in
it; just as men flocked to the Crusades, sacrificing
all they possessed to the cause, and entering cheer-
fully upon hardships which we cannot even imagine
in this age, and upon toilsome and wasting journeys
which in our time would be the equivalent of circum-
navigating the globe five times over.

North and South we put our hearts into that
colossal struggle, and out of it came the blessed
fulfilment of the prophecy of the immortal Gettys-

230

ON LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY

burg speech which said: "We here highly resolve
that these dead shall not have died in vain; that
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of
freedom; and that a government of the people, by
the people, for the people, shall not perish from the
earth."

We are here to honor the birthday of the greatest
citizen, and the noblest and the best, after Washing-
ton, that this land or any other has yet produced.
The old wounds are healed ; you and we are brothers
again; you testify by honoring two of us, once
soldiers of the Lost Cause and foes of your great
and good leader — with the privilege of assisting
here; and we testify it by laying our honest homage
at the feet of Abraham Lincoln and in forgetting
that you of the North and we of the South were ever
enemies, and remembering only that we are now
indistinguishably fused together and namable by one
common great name — Americans.

231

OSTEOPATHY

On February 27, iqoi, Mr. Clemens appeared before the Assembly
Committee in Albany, New York, in favor of the Seymour bill
legalizing the practice of osteopathy.

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN —Dr.
Van Fleet is the gentleman who gave me the
character. I have heard my character discussed a
thousand times before you were born, sir, and shown
the iniquities in it, and you did not get more than
half of them.

I was touched and distressed when they brought
that part of a child in here, and proved — I don't
exactly know what, unless it was that you should not
take a child to pieces i n that way. What remarkable
names those diseases have! It makes me envious
of the man that has them all. I have had many
diseases, and am thankful for all I have had.

One of the gentl emen spoke of the knowledge of
something else found in Sweden, a treatment which
I took. It is, I suppose, a kindred thing. There is
apparently no great difference between them. I was
a year and a half in London and Sweden, in the
hands of that grand old man, Mr. Kellgren.

I cannot call him a doctor, for he has not the
authority to give a certificate if a patient should die,
but fortunately they don't.

The State stands as a mighty Gibraltar clothed
with power. It stands between me and my body,

232

OSTEOPATHY

and tells me what kind of a doctor I must employ.
When my soul is sick unlimited spiritual liberty is
given me by the State. Now then, it doesn't seem
logical that the State shall depart from this great
policy, the health of the soul, and change about and
take the other position in the matter of smaller
consequences — the health of the body.

The Bell bill limitations would drive the osteopaths
out of the State. Oh, dear me ! when you drive some-
body out of the State you create the same condition
as prevailed in the Garden of Eden. You want the
thing that you can't have. I didn't care much about
the osteopaths, but as soon as I found they were
going to drive them out I got in a state of uneasiness,
and I can't sleep nights now.

I know how Adam felt in the Garden of Eden
about the prohibited apple. Adam didn't want the
apple till he found out he couldn't have it, just as he
would have wanted osteopathy if he couldn't have it.

Whose property is my body? Probably mine. I
so regard it. If I experiment with it, who must be
answerable? I, not the State. If I choose injudi-
ciously, does the State die? Oh, no.

I was the subject of my mother's experiment. She
was wise. She made experiments cautiously. She
didn't pick out just any child in the flock. No, she
chose judiciously. She chose one she could spare, and
she couldn't spare the others. I was the choice child
of the flock, so I had to take all of the experiments.

In 1844 Kneipp filled the world with the wonder
of the water cure. Mother wanted to try it, but on
sober second thought she put me through. A bucket

233

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

of ice water was poured over to see the effect. Then
I was rubbed down with flannels, a sheet was dipped
in the water, and I was put to bed. I perspired so
much that mother put a life preserver to bed with me.

But this had nothing but a spiritual effect on me,
and I didn't care for that. When they took off the
sheet it was yellow from the output of my conscience,
the exudation of sin. It purified me spiritually, and
it remains until this day.

I have experimented with osteopathy and allop-
athy. I took a chance at the latter for old times'
sake, for, three times, when a boy, mother's new
methods got me so near death's door she had to call
in the family physician to pull me out.

The physicians think they are moved by regard
for the best interest of the public. Isn't there a little
touch of self-interest back of it all? It seems to me
there is, and I don't claim to have all the virtues —
only nine or ten of them.

I was born in the "Banner State," and by "Banner
State ' ' I mean Missouri. Osteopathy was born in the
same State, and both of us are getting along reasonably
well. At a time during my younger days my attention
was attracted to a picture of a house which bore the
inscription, "Christ Disputing With the Doctors."

I could attach no other meaning to it than that
Christ was actually quarrelling with the doctors. So
I asked an old slave, who was a sort of a herb doctor
in a small way — unlicensed, of course — what the
meaning of the picture was. "What has he done?"
I asked. And the colored man replied: "Humph,
he ain't got no license."

234

BUSINESS

The alumni of Eastman College gave their annual banquet,
March 30, iqoi, at the Y . M. C. A. Building. Mr. James G.
Cannon, of the Fourth National Bank, made the first speech of the
evening, after which Mr. Clemens was introduced by Mr. Bailey
as the personal friend of Tom Sawyer, who was one of the types
of successful business men.

MR. CANNON has furnished me with texts
enough to last as slow a speaker as myself
all the rest of the night. I took exception to the
introducing of Mr. Cannon as a great financier, as
if he were the only great financier present. I am a
financier. But my methods are not the same as Mr.
Cannon's.

I cannot say that I have turned out the great
business man that I thought I was when I began
life. But I am comparatively young yet, and may
learn. I am rather inclined to believe that what
troubled me was that I got the big-head early in the
game. I want to explain to you a few points of
difference between the principles of business as I see
them and those that Mr. Cannon believes in.

He says that the primary rule of business success
is loyalty to your employer. That's all right — as a
theory. What is the matter with loyalty to yourself?
As nearly as I can understand Mr. Cannon's methods,
there is one great drawback to them. He wants you
to work a great deal. Diligence is a good thing, but

235

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

taking things easy is much more — restful. My idea
is that the employer should be the busy man, and
the employee the idle one. The employer should be
the worried man, and the employee the happy one.
And why not? He gets the salary. My plan is to
get another man to do the work for me. In that
there's more repose. What I want is repose first,
last, and all the time.

Mr. Cannon says that there are three cardinal
rules of business success ; they are diligence, honesty,
and truthfulness. Well, diligence is all right. Let
it go as a theory. Honesty is the best policy — when
there is money in it. But truthfulness is one of the
most dangerous — why, this man is misleading you.

I had an experience to-day with my wife which
illustrates this. I was acknowledging a belated invi-
tation to another dinner for this evening, which
seemed to have been sent about ten days ago. It
only reached me this morning. I was mortified at
the discourtesy into which I had been brought by
this delay, and wondered what was being thought
of me by my hosts. As I had accepted your invita-
tion, of course I had to send regrets to my other
friends.

When I started to write this note my wife came
up and stood looking over my shoulder. Women
always want to know what is going on. Said she:
"Should not that read in the third person?" I con-
ceded that it should, put aside what I was writing,
and commenced over again. That seemed to satisfy
her, and so she sat down and let me proceed. I then
— finished my first note — and so sent what I intended.

236

BUSINESS

I never could have done this if I had let my wife
know the truth about it. Here is what I wrote :

To the Ohio Society, — I have at this moment received a
most kind invitation (eleven days old) from Mr. Southard,
president; and a like one (ten days old) from Mr. Bryant,
president of the Press Club. I thank the society cordially for
the compliment of these invitations, although I am booked else-
where and cannot come.

But, oh, I should like to know the name of the Lightning
Express by which they were forwarded; for I owe a friend a
dozen chickens, and I believe it will be cheaper to send eggs
instead, and let them develop on the road.

Sincerely yours,

Mark Twain.

I want to tell you of some of my experiences in
business, and then I will be in a position to lay down
one general rule for the guidance of those who want
to succeed in business. My first effort was about
twenty-five years ago. I took hold of an invention —
I don't know now what it was all about, but some
one came to me and told me it was a good thing, and
that there was lots of money in it. He persuaded me
to invest $15,000, and I lived up to my beliefs by
engaging a man to develop it. To make a long story
short, I sunk $40,000 in it.

Then I took up the publication of a book. I
called in a publisher and said to him: "I want you
to publish this book along lines which I shall lay
down. I am the employer, and you are the employee.
I am going to show them some new kinks in the pub-
lishing business. And I want you to draw on me for
money as you go along," which he did. He drew on
me for $56,000. Then I asked him to take the book
and call it off. But he refused to do that.

237

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

My next venture was with a machine for doing
something or other. I knew less about that than I
did about the invention. But I sunk $170,000 in
the business, and I can't for the life of me recollect
what it was the machine was to do.

I was still undismayed. You see, one of the strong
points about my business life was that I never gave
up. I undertook to publish General Grant's book,
and made $140,000 in six months. My axiom is, to
succeed in business : avoid my example.

238

DINNER TO HAMILTON W. MABIE

Address Delivered April 29, 1901
In introducing Mr. Clemens, Doctor Van Dyke said:

"The longer the speaking goes on to-night the more I wonder
how I got this job, and the only explanation I can give for it is
that it is the same kind of compensation for the number of
articles I have sent to The Outlook, to be rejected by Hamilton
W. Mabie. There is one man here to-night that has a job cut
out for him that none of you would have had — a man whose
humor has put a girdle of light around the globe, and whose
sense of humor has been an example for all five continents. He
is going to speak to you. Gentlemen, you know him best as
Mark Twain."

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,—
This man knows now how it feels to be the
chief guest, and if he has enjoyed it he is the first
man I have ever seen in that position that did enjoy
it. And I know, by side remarks which he made to
me before his ordeal came upon him, that he was
feeling as some of the rest of us have felt under the
same circumstances. He was afraid that he would
not do himself justice; but he did — to my surprise.
It is a most serious thing to be a chief guest on an
occasion like this, and it is admirable, it is fine. It
is a great compliment to a man that he shall come
out of it so gloriously as Mr. Mabie came out of it
to-night — to my surprise. He did it well.

He appears to be editor of The Outlook, and not-
withstanding that, I have every admiration, because

239

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

when everything is said concerning The Outlook, after
all one must admit that it is frank in its delinquencies,
that is it outspoken in its departures from facts, that
it is vigorous in its mistaken criticism of men like me.
I have lived in this world a long, long time, and I
know you must judge a man by the editorials that
he puts in his paper. A man is always better than
his printed opinions. A man always reserves to
himself on the inside a purity and an honesty and
a justice that are a credit to him, whereas the things
that he prints are just the reverse.

Oh yes, you must not judge a man by what he
writes in his paper. Even in an ordinary secular
paper a man must observe some care about it; he
must be better than the principles which he puts in
print. And that is the case with Mr. Mabie. Why,
to see what he writes about me and the missionaries
you would think he did not have any principles. 1
But that is Mr. Mabie in his public capacity. Mr.
Mabie in his private capacity is just as clean a man
as I am.

In this very room, a month or two ago, some
people admired that portrait; some admired this,
but the great majority fastened on that, and said,
"There is a portrait that is a beautiful piece of
art." When that portrait is a hundred years old it
will suggest what were the manners and customs in
our time. Just as they talk about Mr. Mabie
to-night, in that enthusiastic way, pointing out the

1 Reference to the drastic articles written by Mark Twain on the
missionaries in China. These articles had stirred up all the religious
papers — including the Outlook.

240

DINNER TO HAMILTON W. MABIE

various virtues of the man and the grace of his
spirit, and all that, so was that portrait talked about.
They were enthusiastic, just as we men have been
over the character and the work of Mr. Mabie.
And when they were through they said that portrait,
fine as it is, that work, beautiful as it is, that piece
of humanity on that canvas, gracious and fine as it
is, does not rise to those perfections that exist in the
man himself. Come up, Mr. Alexander. [The refer-
ence was to James W. Alexander, who happened to
be sitting beneath the portrait of himself on the
wall.] Now, I should come up and show myself.
But he cannot do it, he cannot do it. He was born
that way, he was reared in that way. Let his
modesty be an example, and I wish some of you
had it, too. But that is just what I have been say-
ing — that portrait, fine as it is, is not as fine as the
man represents, and all the things that have been
said about Mr. Mabie, and certainly they have been
very nobly worded and beautiful, still fall short of
the real Mabie.

241

THE DINNER TO MR. CHOATE

At a Dinner Given in Honor of Ambassador Joseph H.
Choate at the Lotos Club, November 24, 1901

The speakers, among others, were: Senator Depew, William
Henry White, Speaker Thomas Reed, and Mr. Choate. Mr.
Clemens spoke, in part, as follows:

THE greatness of this country rests on two anec-
dotes. The first one is that of Washington and
his hatchet, representing the foundation of true speak-
ing, which is the characteristic of our people. The
second one is an old one, and I've been waiting to
hear it to-night; but as nobody has told it yet, I
will tell it.

You've heard it before, and you'll hear it many,
many times more. It is an anecdote of our guest,
of the time when he was engaged as a young man
with a gentle Hebrew, in the process of skinning the
client. The main part in that business is the collec-
tion of the bill for services in skinning the man.
"Services" is the term used in that craft for the
operation of that kind — diplomatic in its nature.

Choate 's — co-respondent — made out a bill for five
hundred dollars for his services, so called. But
Choate told him he better leave the matter to him,
and the next day he collected the bill for the services
and handed the Hebrew five thousand dollars, saying,
"That's your half of the loot," and inducing that

242

THE DINNER TO MR. CHOATE

memorable response: "Almost thou persuadest me
to become a Christian."

The deep - thinkers didn't merely laugh when
that happened. They stopped to think, and said:
"There's a rising man. He must be rescued from
the law and consecrated to diplomacy. The com-
mercial advantages of a great nation lie there in
the man's keeping. We no longer require a man to
take care of our moral character before the world.
Washington and his anecdote have done that. We
require a man to take care of our commercial
prosperity."

Mr. Choate has carried that trait with him, and,
as Mr. Carnegie has said, he has worked like a mole
underground.

We see the result when American railroad iron is
sold so cheap in England that the poorest family can
have it. He has so beguiled that Cabinet of England.

He has been spreading the commerce of this nation,
and has depressed English commerce in the same
ratio. This was the principle underlying that anec-
dote, and the wise men saw it ; the principle of give
and take — give one and take ten — the principle of
diplomacy.

243

SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY

At the Metropolitan Club, New York,
November 28, 1902

Address at a dinner given in honor of Mr. Clemens by Colonel
Harvey. President of Harper 6* Brothers.

I THINK I ought to be allowed to talk as long as
I want to, for the reason that I have cancelled
all my winter's engagements of every kind, for good
and sufficient reasons, and am making ro new engage-
ments for this winter, and, therefore, this is the only
chance I shall have to disembowel my skull for a
year — close the mouth in that portrait for a year.
I want to offer thanks and homage to the chairman
for this innovation which he has introduced here,
which is an improvement, as I consider it, on the
old-fashioned style of conducting occasions like this.
That was bad — that was a bad, bad, bad arrange-
ment. Under that old custom when the chairman
got up and made a speech, he introduced the prisoner
at the bar, and covered him all over with compli-
ments, nothing but compliments, not a thing but
compliments, never a slur, and sat down and left
that man to get up and talk without a text. You
cannot talk on compliments ; that is not a text. No
modest person, and I was born one, can talk on com-
pliments. A man gets up and is filled to the eyes
with happy emotions, but his tongue is tied ; he has

244

SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY

nothing to say; he is in the condition of Doctor
Rice's friend who came home drunk and explained
it to his wife, and his wife said to him, "John, when
you have drunk all the whiskey you want, you ought
to ask for sarsaparilla." He said, "Yes, but when
I have drunk all the whiskey I want I can't say
sarsaparilla." And so I think it is much better to
leave a man unmolested until the testimony and
pleadings are all in. Otherwise he is dumb — he is
at the sarsaparilla stage.

Before I get to the higgledy-piggledy point, as Mr.
Howells suggested I do, I want to thank you, gen-
tlemen, for this very high honor you are doing me,
and I am quite competent to estimate it at its value.
I see around me captains of all the illustrious indus-
tries, most distinguished men; there are more than
fifty here, and I believe I know thirty-nine of them
well. I could probably borrow money from — from
the others, anyway. It is a proud thing to me, indeed,
to see such a distinguished company gather here on
such an occasion as this, when there is no foreign
prince to be feted — when you have come here not to
do honor to hereditary privilege and ancient lineage,
but to do reverence to mere moral excellence and
elemental veracity — and, dear me, how old it seems
to make me! I look around me and I see three or
four persons I have known so many, many years. I
have known Mr. Secretary Hay — John Hay, as the
nation and the rest of his friends love to call him — I
have known John Hay and Tom Reed and the
Reverend Twichell close upon thirty-six years.
Close upon thirty-six years I have known those

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

venerable men. I have known Mr. Ho wells nearly
thirty-four years, and I knew Chauncey Depew
before he could walk straight, and before he learned
to tell the truth. Twenty-seven years ago I heard
him make the most noble, eloquent and beautiful
speech that has ever fallen from even his capable
lips. Tom Reed said that my principle defect was
inaccuracy of statement. Well, suppose that that is
true. What's the use of telling the truth all the
time? I never tell the truth about Tom Reed — but
that is his defect, truth; he speaks the truth always.
Tom Reed has a good heart, and he has a good
intellect, but he hasn't any judgment. Why, when
Tom Reed was invited to lecture to the Ladies'
Society for the Procreation or Procrastination, or
something, of morals, I don't know what it was —
advancement, I suppose, of pure morals — he had
the immoral indiscretion to begin by saying that
some of us can't be optimists, but by judiciously
utilizing the opportunities that Providence puts in
our way we can all be bigamists. You perceive his
limitations. Anything he has in his mind he states,
if he thinks it is true. Well, that was true, but that
was no place to say it — so they fired him out.

A lot of accounts have been settled here to-night
for me; I have held grudges against some of these
people, but they have all been wiped out by the
very handsome compliments that have been paid
me. Even Wayne MacVeagh — I have had a grudge
against him many years. The first time I saw Wayne
MacVeagh was at a private dinner party at Charles
A. Dana's, and when I got there he was clattering

246

SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY

along, and I tried to get a word in here and there;
but you know what Wayne MacVeagh is when he is
started, and I could not get in five words to his
one — or one word to his five. I struggled along and
struggled along, and — well, I wanted to tell and
I was trying to tell a dream I had had the night before,
and it was a remarkable dream, a dream worth
people's while to listen to, a dream recounting Sam
Jones the revivalist's reception in heaven. I was on
a train, and was approaching the celestial way
station — I had a through ticket — and I noticed a
man sitting alongside of me asleep, and he had his
ticket in his hat. He was the remains of the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury; I recognized him by his
photograph. I had nothing against him, so I took
his ticket and let him have mine. He didn't object
— he wasn't in a condition to object — and presently
when the train stopped at the heavenly station —
well, I got off, and he went on by request — but there
they all were, the angels, you know, millions of them,
every one with a torch; they had arranged for a
torch-light procession ; they were expecting the Arch-
bishop, and when I got off they started to raise a
shout, but it didn't materialize. I don't know
whether they were disappointed. I suppose they
had a lot of superstitious ideas about the Archbishop
and what he should look like, and I didn't fill the
bill, and I was trying to explain to Saint Peter, and
was doing it in the German tongue, because I didn't
want to be too explicit. Well, I found it was no use,
I couldn't get along, for Wayne MacVeagh was
occupying the whole place, and I said to Mr. Dana,

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

"What is the matter with that man? Who is that
man with the long tongue? What's the trouble with
him, that long, lank cadaver, old oil-derrick out of
a job — who is that?" "Well, now," Mr. Dana said,
1 ' you don't want to meddle with him ; you had better
keep quiet; because that's a bad man. Talk! He
was born to talk. Don't let him get out with you;
he'll skin you." I said, "I have been skinned,
skinned, and skinned for years, there is nothing
left." He said, "Oh, you'll find there is; that man
is the very seed and inspiration of that proverb
which says, ' No matter how close you skin an onion,
a clever man can always peel it again.'" Well, I
reflected and I quieted down. That would never
occur to Tom Reed. He's got no discretion. Well,
MacVeagh is just the same man; he hasn't changed
a bit in all those years; he has been peeling Mr.
Mitchell lately. That's the kind of man he is.

Mr. Howells — that poem of his is admirable ; that's
the way to treat a person. Howells has a peculiar
gift for seeing the merits of people, and he has
always exhibited them in my favor. Howells has
never written anything about me that I couldn't
read six or seven times a day ; he is always just and
always fair ; he has written more appreciatively of me
than anyone in this world, and published it in the
North American Review. He did me the justice to
say that my intentions — he italicized that — that my
intentions were always good, that I wounded people's
conventions rather than their convictions. Now, I
wouldn't want anything handsomer than that said
of me. I would rather wait, with anything harsh I

248

SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY

might have to say, till the convictions become con-
ventions. Bangs has traced me all the way down.
He can't find that honest man, but I will look for
him in the looking-glass when I get home. It was
intimated by the Colonel that it is New England
that makes New York and builds up this country
and makes it great, overlooking the fact that there's
a lot of people here who came from elsewhere, like
John Hay from away out West, and Howells from
Ohio, and St. Clair McKelway and me from Mis-
souri, and we are doing what we can to build up
New York a little — elevate it. Why, when I was
living in that village of Hannibal, Missouri, on the
banks of the Mississippi, and Hay up in the town of
Warsaw, also on the banks of the Mississippi River —
it is an emotional bit of the Mississippi, and when
it is low water you have to climb up to it on a ladder,
and when it floods you have to hunt for it with a
deep-sea lead — but it is a great and beautiful country.
In that old time it was a paradise for simplicity — it
was a simple, simple life, cheap but comfortable, and
full of sweetness, and there was nothing of this rage
of modern civilization there at all. It was a delec-
table land. I went out there last June, and I met in
that town of Hannibal a schoolmate of mine, John
Briggs, whom I had not seen for more than fifty
years. I tell you, that was a meeting! That pal
whom I had known as a little boy long ago, and
knew now as a stately man three or four inches over
six feet and browned by exposure to many climes,
he was back there to see that old place again. We
spent a whole afternoon going about here and there

249

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

and yonder, and hunting up the scenes and talking
of the crimes which we had committed so long ago.
It was a heartbreaking delight, full of pathos,
laughter, and tears, all mixed together; and we
called the roll of the boys and girls that we picnicked
and sweethearted with so many years ago, and there
were hardly half a dozen of them left ; the rest were
in their graves ; and we went up there on the summit
of that hill, a treasured place in my memory, the
summit of Holiday's Hill, and looked out again over
that magnificent panorama of the Mississippi River,

eping along league after league, a level green
paradise on one side, and retreating capes and prom-
ontories as far as you could see on the other,
fading away in the soft, rich lights of the remote
distance. I recognized then that I was seeing now
the most enchanting river view the planet could
furnish. I never knew it when I was a boy ; it took
an educated eye that had travelled over the globe to
know and appreciate it; and John said, "Can you
point out the place where Bear Creek used to be
before the railroad came?" I said, "Yes, it ran
along yonder." "And can you point out the

mming hole?" "Yes, out there." And he said,
"Can you point out the place where we stole the
skirl?" Well, I didn't know which one he meant.
Such a wilderness of events had intervened since that
day, more than fifty years ago, it took me more than
five minutes to call back that little incident, and
then I did call it back; it was a white skirl, and we
painted it red to allay suspicion. And the saddest,
saddest man came along — a stranger he was — and

250

SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTH HAY

he looked that red skiff over so pathetically, and he
said: "Well, if it weren't for its complexion I'd
know whose skiff that was." He said it, in that
pleading way, you know, that appeals for sympathy
and suggestion; we were full of sympathy for him,
but we we" Q n't in any condition to offer suggest ions.
I can see liini yet as he turned away with that Same
sad look on his faee and vanished out of history
forever. I wonder what became of that man. I
know what became of the skiff. Well, it was a
beautiful life, a lovely life. There was no crime.
Merely little things like pillaging Orchards and
watermelon patches and breaking the Sabbath — we
didn't break the Sabbath often enough to signify —
once a week perhaps. But we were good boys, good
Presbyterian boys, all Presbyterian boys, and loyal
and all that; anyway, we were good Presbyterian
boys when the weather was doubtful; when it was
fair, we did wander a little from the fold.

Look at John Hay and me. There we were in
obscurity, and look where we are now. Consider
the ladder which he has climbed, the illustrious voca-
tions he has served — and vocations is the right word ;
he has in all those vocations acquitted himself with
high credit and honor to his country and to the
mother that bore him. Scholar, soldier, diplomat,
poet, historian — now, see where we are. He is Sec-
retary of State and I am a gentleman. It could not
happen in any other country. Our institutions give
men the positions that of right belong to them
through merit; all you men have won your places,
not by heredities, and not by family influences or

251

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

extraneous help, but only by the natural gifts God
gave you at your birth, made effective by your own
energies; this is the country to live in.

Now, there is one invisible guest here. A part of
me is present; the larger part, the better part, is
yonder at her home; that is my wife, and she has a
good many personal friends here, and I think it
won't distress any one of them to know that, although
she is going to be confined to that bed for many
months to come from that nervous prostration, there
is not any danger and she is coming along very well —
and I think it quite appropriate that I should speak
of her. I knew her for the first time just in the same
year that I first knew John Hay and Tom Reed and
Mr. Twichell — thirty-six years ago — and she has been
the best friend I have ever had, and that is saying a
good deal; she has reared me — she and Twichell
together — and what I am I owe to them. Twichell
— why, it is such a pleasure to look upon Twichell's
face! For five-and-twenty years I was under the
Rev. Mr. Twichell's tuition, I was in his pastorate,
occupying a pew in his church, and held him in due
reverence. That man is full of all the graces that go
to make a person companionable and beloved; and
wherever Twichell goes to start a church the people
flock there to buy the land; they find real estate
goes up all around the spot, and the envious and the
thoughtful always try to get Twichell to move to
their neighborhood and start a church ; and wherever
you see him go you can go and buy land there with
confidence, feeling sure that there will be a double
price for you before very long. I am not saying this

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SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY

to flatter Mr. Twichell; it is the fact. Many and
many a time I have attended the annual sale in his
church, and bought up all the pews on a margin —
and it would have been better for me spiritually and
financially if I had stayed under his wing.

I have tried to do good in this world, and it is
marvellous in how many different ways I have done
good, and it is comfortable to reflect — now, there's
Mr. Rogers — just out of the affection I bear that
man many a time I have given him points in finance
that he had never thought of — and if he could lay
aside envy, prejudice, and superstition, and utilize
those ideas in his business, it would make a difference
in his bank account.

Well, I like the poetry. I like all the speeches
and the poetry, too. I like Doctor Van Dyke's
poem. I wish I could return thanks in proper meas-
ure to you, gentlemen, who have spoken and violated
your feelings to pay me compliments; some were
merited and some you overlooked, it is true; and
Colonel Harvey did slander every one of you, and
put things into my mouth that I never said, never
thought of at all.

And now, my wife and I, out of our single heart,
return you our deepest and most grateful thanks,
and — yesterday was her birthday.

253

SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

Address at a Dinner Given by Colonel George Harvey

at Delmonico's, December 5, 1905, to Celebrate

the Seventieth Anniversary of Mr.

Clemens's Birth

Mr. Eowells introduced Mr. Clemens:

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, and Colonel Harvey, I will try-
to be greedy on your behalf in wishing the health of our honored
and, in view of his great age, our revered guest. I will not say,
'O King, live forever!' but '0 King, live as long as you like!'"
[Amid great applause and waving of napkins all rose and drank
to Mark Twain.]

WELL, if I had made that joke, it would be
the best one I ever made, and in the prettiest
language, too. I never can get quite to that height.
But I appreciate that joke, and I shall remember it
— and I shall use it when occasion requires.

I have had a great many birthdays in my time. I
remember the first one very well, and I always think
of it with indignation; everything was so crude,
unaesthetic, primeval. Nothing like this at all. No
proper appreciative preparation made ; nothing really
ready. Now, for a person born with high and delicate
instincts — why, even the cradle wasn't whitewashed
— nothing ready at all. I hadn't any hair, I hadn't
any teeth, I hadn't any clothes, I had to go to my
first banquet just like that. Well, everybody came
swarming in. It was the merest little bit of a village

254

SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

— hardly that, just a little hamlet, in the backwoods
of Missouri, where nothing ever happened, and the
people were all interested, and they all came; they
looked me over to see if there was anything fresh in
my line. Why, nothing ever happened in that vil-
lage — I — why, I was the only thing that had really
happened there for months and months and months ;
and although I say it myself that shouldn't, I came
the nearest to being a real event that had happened
in that village in more than two years. Well, those
people came, they came with that curiosity which is
so provincial, with that frankness which also is so
provincial, and they examined me all around and
gave their opinion. Nobody asked them, and I
shouldn't have minded if anybody had paid me a
compliment, but nobody did. Their opinions were
all just green with prejudice, and I feel those opinions
to this day. Well, I stood that as long as — you know
I was courteous, and I stood it to the limit. I stood
it an hour, and then the worm turned. I was the
worm; it was my turn to turn, and I turned. I
knew very well the strength of my position ; I knew
that I was the only spotlessly pure and innocent
person in that whole town, and I came out and said
so. And they could not say a word. It was so true.
They blushed; they were embarrassed. Well, that
was the first after-dinner speech I ever made. I
think it was after dinner.

It's a long stretch between that first birthday
speech and this one. That was my cradle song, and
this is my swan song, I suppose. I am used to swan
songs ; I have sung them several times.

255

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

This is my seventieth birthday, and I wonder
if you all rise to the size of that proposition, realiz-
ing all the significance of that phrase, seventieth
birthday.

The seventieth birthday! It is the time of life
when you arrive at a new and awful dignity; when
you may throw aside the decent reserves which have
oppressed you for a generation and stand unafraid
and unabashed upon your seven-terraced summit
and look down and teach — unrebuked. You can tell
the world how you got there. It is what they all do.
You shall never get tired of telling by what delicate
arts and deep moralities you climb up to that great
place. You will explain the process and dwell on
the particulars with senile rapture. I have been
anxious to explain my own system this long time,
and now at last I have the right.

I have achieved my seventy years in the usual
way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which
would kill anybody else. It sounds like an exagger-
ation, but that is really the common rule for attain-
ing old age. When we examine the programme of
any of these garrulous old people we always find
that the habits which have preserved them would
have decayed us ; that the way of life which enabled
them to live upon the property of their heirs so long,
as Mr. Choate says, would have put us out of com-
mission ahead of time. I will offer here, as a sound
maxim, this: That we can't reach old age by another
man's road.

I will now teach, offering my way of life to whom •
soever desires to commit suicide by the scheme which

256

SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

has enabled me to beat the doctor and the hangman
for seventy years. Some of the details may sound
untrue, but they are not. I am not here to deceive;
I am here to teach.

We have no permanent habits until we are forty.
Then they begin to harden, presently they petrify,
then business begins. Since forty I have been regular
about going to bed and getting up — and that is one
of the main things. I have made it a rule to go to
bed when there wasn't anybody left to sit up with;
and I have made it a rule to get up when I had to.
This has resulted in an unswerving regularity of
irregularity. It has saved me sound, but it would
injure another person.

In the matter of diet — which is another main
thing — I have been persistently strict in sticking to
the things which didn't agree with me until one or
the other of us got the best of it. Until lately I got
the best of it myself. But last spring I stopped
frolicking with mince pie after midnight ; up to then
I had always believed it wasn't loaded. For thirty
years I have taken coffee and bread at eight in the
morning, and no bite nor sup until seven-thirty in
the evening. Eleven hours. That is all right for
me, and is wholesome, because I have never had a
headache in my life, but headachy people would not
reach seventy comfortably by that road, and they
would be foolish to try it. And I wish to urge upon
you this — which I think is wisdom — that if you find
you can't make seventy by any but an uncomfortable
road, don't you go. When they take off the Pullman
and retire you to the rancid smoker, put on your

257

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

things, count your checks, and get out at the first
way station where there's a cemetery.

I have made it a rule never to smoke more than
one cigar at a time. I have no other restriction as
regards smoking. I do not know just when I began
to smoke, I only know that it was in my father's life-
time, and that I was discreet. He passed from this
life early in 1847, when I was a shade past eleven;
ever since than I have smoked publicly. As an
example to others, and not that I care for modera-
tion myself, it has always been my rule never to
smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake.
It is a good rule. I mean, for me ; but some of you
know quite well that it wouldn't answer for every-
body that's trying to get to be seventy.

I smoke in bed until I have to go to sleep ; I wake
up in the night, sometimes once, sometimes twice,
sometimes three times, and I never waste any of
these opportunities to smoke. This habit is so old
and dear and precious to me that I would feel as
you, sir, would feel if you should lose the only moral
you've got — meaning the chairman — if you've got
one: I am making no charges. 1 will grant, here,
that I have stopped smoking now and then, for a
few months at a time, but it was not on principle,
it was only to show off; it was to pulverize those
critics who said I was a slave to my habits and
couldn't break my bonds.

To-day it is all of sixty years since I began to
smoke the limit. I have never bought cigars with
life belts around them. I early found that those
were too expensive for me. I have always bought

258

SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

cheap cigars — reasonably cheap, at any rate. Sixty
years ago they cost me four dollars a barrel, but my
taste has improved, latterly, and I pay seven now.
Six or seven. Seven, I think. Yes, it's seven. But
that includes the barrel. I often have smoking
parties at my house ; but the people that come have
always just taken the pledge. I wonder why that is ?

As for drinking, I have no rule about that. When
the others drink I like to help; otherwise I remain
dry, by habit and preference. This dryness does
not hurt me, but it could easily hurt you, because
you are different. You let it alone.

Since I was seven years old I have seldom taken
a dose of medicine, and have still seldomer needed
one. But up to seven I lived exclusively on allo-
pathic medicines. Not that I needed them, for I
don't think I did; it was for economy; my father
took a drug store for a debt, and it made cod- liver
oil cheaper than the other breakfast foods. We had
nine barrels of it, and it lasted me seven years. Then
I was weaned. The rest of the family had to get
along with rhubarb and ipecac and such things^
because I was the pet. I was the first Standard Oil
Trust. I had it all. By the time the drug store was
exhausted my health was established and there has
never been much the matter with me since. But
you know very well it would be foolish for the
average child to start for seventy on that basis. It
happened to be just the thing for me, but that was,
merely an accident; it couldn't happen again in a
century.

I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping
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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

and resting, and I never intend to take any. Exercise
is loathsome. And it cannot be any benefit when
you are tired; and I was always tired. But let
another person try my way, and see whence he will
come out.

I desire now to repeat and emphasize that maxim:
We can't reach old age by another man's road. My
habits protect my life, but they would assassinate
you.

I have lived a severely moral life. But it would
be a mistake for other people to try that, or for me
to recommend it. Very few would succeed: you
have to have a perfectly colossal stock of morals;
and you can't get them on a margin; you have to
have the whole thing, and put them in your box.
Morals are an acquirement — like music, like a foreign
language, like piety, poker, paralysis — no man is
born with them. I wasn't myself, I started poor.
I hadn't a single moral. There is hardly a man in
this house that is poorer than I was then. Yes, I
started like that — the world before me, not a moral
in the slot. Not even an insurance moral. I can
remember the first one I ever got. I can remember
the landscape, the weather, the — I can remember
how everything looked. It was an old moral, an old
second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn't fit,
anyway. But if you are careful with a thing like
that, and keep it in a dry place, and save it for
processions, and Chautauquas, and World's Fairs,
and so on, and disinfect it now and then, and give
it a fresh coat of whitewash once in a while, you will
be surprised to see how well she will last and how

260

SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

long she will keep sweet, or at least inoffensive.
When I got that mouldy old moral, she had stopped
growing, because she hadn't any exercise; but I
worked her hard, I worked her Sundays and all.
Under this cultivation she waxed in might and
stature beyond belief, and served me well and was
my pride and joy for sixty-three years; then she got
to associating with insurance presidents, and lost
flesh and character, and was a sorrow to look at and
no longer competent for business. She was a great
loss to me. Yet not all loss. I sold her — ah, pathetic
skeleton, as she was — I sold her to Leopold, the
pirate King of Belgium; he sold her to our Metro-
politan Museum, and it was very glad to get her,
for without a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16
feet high, and they think she's a brontosaur. Well,
she looks it. They believe it will take nineteen geo-
logical periods to breed her match.

Morals are of inestimable value, for every man is
born crammed with sin microbes, and the only thing
that can extirpate these sin microbes is morals. Now
you take a sterilized Christian — I mean, you take
the sterilized Christian, for there's only one. Dear
sir, I wish you wouldn't look at me like that.

Threescore years and ten !

It is the Scriptural statute of limitations. After
that, you owe no active duties; for you the strenu-
ous life is over. You are a time-expired man, to use
Kipling's military phrase: You have served your
term, well or less well, and you are mustered out.
You are become an honorary member of the republic,
you are emancipated, compulsions are not for you,

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

nor any bugle call but "lights out." You pay the
time-worn duty bills if you choose, or decline if you
prefer — and without prejudice — for they are not
legally collectable.

The previous-engagement plea, which in forty
years has cost you so many twinges, you can lay
aside forever; on this side of the grave you will
never need it again. If you shrink at thought of
night, and winter, and the late home-coming from
the banquet and the lights and the laughter through
the deserted streets — a desolation which would not
remind you now, as for a generation it did, that
your friends are sleeping, and you must creep in
a-tiptoe and not disturb them, but would only
remind you that you need not tiptoe, you can never
disturb them more — if you shrink at thought of
these things, you need only reply, "Your invitation
honors me, and pleases me because you still keep me
in your remembrance, but I am seventy; seventy,
and would nestle in the chimney corner, and smoke
my pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wish-
ing you well in all affection, and that when you in
your turn shall arrive at pier No. 70 you may step
aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit,
and lay your course toward the sinking sun with a
contented heart.

262

RUSSIAN SUFFERERS

On December 18, 1905, an entertainment was given at the Casino
for the benefit of the Russian sufferers. After the performance
Mr. Clemens spoke.

IADIES AND GENTLEMEN,— It seems a sort
j of cruelty to inflict upon an audience like this
our rude English tongue, after we have heard that
divine speech flowing in that lucid Gallic tongue.

It has always been a marvel to me — that French
language; it has always been a puzzle to me. How
beautiful that language is. How expressive it seems
to be. How full of grace it is.

And when it comes from lips like those, how elo-
quent and how liquid it is. And, oh, I am always
deceived — I always think I am going to understand it.

Oh, it is such a delight to me, such a delight to me,
to meet Madame Bernhardt, and laugh hand to hand
and heart to heart with her.

I have seen her play, as we all have, and oh, that
is divine; but I have always wanted to know
Madame Bernhardt herself — her fiery self. I have
wanted to know that beautiful character.

Why, she is the youngest person I ever saw, except
myself — for I always feel young when I come in the
presence of young people.

I have a pleasant recollection of an incident so
many years ago — when Madame Bernhardt came to

263

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

Hartford, where I lived, and she was going to play
and the tickets were three dollars, and there were
two lovely women — a widow and her daughter —
neighbors of ours, highly cultivated ladies they were ;
their tastes were fine and elevated, but they were
very poor, and they said: "Well, we must not spend
six dollars on a pleasure of the mind, a pleasure of
intellect; we must spend it, if it must go at all, to
furnish to somebody bread to eat."

And so they sorrowed over the fact that they had
to give up that great pleasure of seeing Madame
Bernhardt, but there were two neighbors equally
highly cultivated and who could not afford bread,
and those good-hearted Joneses sent that six dollars —
deprived themselves of it — and sent it to those poor
Smiths to buy bread with. And those Smiths took it
and bought tickets with it to see Madame Bernhardt.

Oh yes, some people have tastes and intelligence
also.

Now, I was going to make a speech — I supposed I
was, but I am not. It is late, late; and so I am going
to tell a story; and there is this advantage about a
story, anyway, that whatever moral or valuable
thing you put into a speech, why, it gets diffused
among those involuted sentences and possibly your
audience goes away without finding out what that
valuable thing was that you were trying to confer
upon it; but, dear me, you put the same jewel into
a story and it becomes the keystone of that story,
and you are bound to get it — it flashes, it flames, it
is the jewel in the toad's head — you don't overlook
that.

264

RUSSIAN SUFFERERS

Now, if I am going to talk on such a subject as,
for instance, the lost opportunity — oh, the lost oppor-
tunity. Anybody in this house who has reached the
turn of life — sixty, or seventy, or even fifty, or along
there — when he goes back along his history, there
he finds it mile-stoned all the way with the lost
opportunity, and you know how pathetic that is.

You younger ones cannot know the full pathos
that lies in those words — the lost opportunity; but
anybody who is old, who has really lived and felt
this life, he knows the pathos of the lost opportunity.

Now, I will tell you a story whose moral is that,
whose lesson is that, whose lament is that.

I was in a village which is a suburb of New Bed-
ford several years ago — well, New Bedford is a suburb
of Fair Haven, or perhaps it is the other way; in any
case, it took both of those towns to make a great
center of the great whaling industry of the first half
of the nineteenth century, and I was up there at
Fair Haven some years ago with a friend of mine.

There was a dedication of a great town hall, a
public building, and we were there in the afternoon.
This great building was filled, like this great theatre,
with rejoicing villagers, and my friend and I started
down the centre aisle. He saw a man standing in
that aisle, and he said: "Now, look at that bronzed
veteran — at that mahogany-faced man. Now, tell
me, do you see anything about that man's face that
is emotional? Do you see anything about it that
suggests that inside that man anywhere there are
fires that can be started? Would you ever imagine
that that is a human volcano?"

265

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

"Why, no," I said, "I would not. He looks like
a wooden Indian in front of a cigar store."

"Very well," said my friend, "I will show you that
there is emotion even in that unpromising place. I
will just go to that man and I will just mention in
the most casual way an incident in his life. That
man is getting along toward ninety years old. He is
past eighty. I will mention an incident of fifty or
sixty years ago. Now, just watch the effect, and it
will be so casual that if you don't watch you won't
know when I do say that thing — but you just watch
the effect."

He went on down there and accosted this antiquity,
and made a remark or two. I could not catch up.
They were so casual I could not recognize which one
it was that touched that bottom, for in an instant
that old man was literally in eruption and was filling
the whole place with profanity of the most exquisite
kind. You never heard such accomplished profanity.
I never heard it also delivered with such eloquence.

I never enjoyed profanity as I enjoyed it then —
more than if I had been uttering it myself. There is
nothing like listening to an artist — all his passions
passing away in lava, smoke, thunder, lightning, and
earthquake.

Then this friend said to me: "Now, I will tell you
about that. About sixty years ago that man was a
young fellow of twenty-three, and had just come
home from a three years' whaling voyage. He came
into that village of his, happy and proud because now,
instead of being chief mate, he was going to be master
of a whale ship, and he was proud and happy about it.

266

RUSSIAN SUFFERERS

"Then he found that there had been a kind of a
cold frost come upon that town and the whole region
roundabout ; for while he had been away the Father
Mathew temperance excitement had come upon the
whole region. Therefore, everybody had taken the
pledge; there wasn't anybody for miles and miles
around that had not taken the pledge.

"So you can see what a solitude it was to this
young man, who was fond of his grog. And he was
just an outcast, because when they found he would
not join Father Mathew's Society they ostracized
him, and he went about that town three weeks, day
and night, in utter loneliness — the only human being
in the whole place who ever took grog, and he had
to take it privately.

"If you don't know what it is to be ostracized, to
be shunned by your fellow-man, may you never
know it. Then he recognized that there was some-
thing more valuable in this life than grog, and that
is the fellowship of your fellow-man. And at last he
gave it up, and at nine o'clock one night he went
down to the Father Mathew Temperance Society,
and with a broken heart he said : ' Put my name down
for membership in this society.'

"And then he went away crying, and at earliest
dawn the next morning they came for him and routed
him out, and they said that new ship of his was ready
to sail on a three years' voyage. In a minute he was
on board that ship and gone.

"And he said — well, he was not out of sight of
that town till he began to repent, but he had made
up his mind that he would not take a drink, and so

267

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

that whole voyage of three years was a three years'
agony to that man because he saw all the time the
mistake he had made.

"He felt it all through; he had constant reminders
of it, because the crew would pass him with their
grog, come out on the deck and take it, and there
was the torturous smell of it.

"He went through the whole three years of suffer-
ing, and at last coming into port it was snowy, it
was cold, he was stamping through the snow two
feet deep on the deck and longing to get home, and
there was his crew torturing him to the last minute
with hot grog, but at last he had his reward. He
really did get to shore at last, and jumped and ran
and bought a jug and rushed to the society's office
and said to the secretary:

" 'Take my name off your membership books, and
do it right away ! I have got a three years' thirst on.'

"And the secretary said: ' It is not necessary. You
were blackballed V "

268

JOAN OF ARC

Address at the Dinner of the Society of Illustrators,

Given at the Aldine Association Club,

December 22, 1905

Just before Mr. Clemens made his speech, a young woman
attired as Joan of Arc, with a page bearing her flag of battle,
courtesied reverently and tendered Mr. Clemens a laurel wreath on
a satin pillow. He tried to speak, but his voice failed from excess
of emotion. "I thank youl ,} he finally exclaimed, and, pulling
himself together, he began his speech.

NOW there is an illustration [pointing to the
retreating Joan of Arc]. That is exactly
what I wanted — precisely what I wanted — when I
was describing to myself Joan of Arc, after studying
her history and her character for twelve years
diligently.

That was the product — not the conventional Joan
of Arc. Wherever you find the conventional Joan of
Arc in history she is an offence to anybody who
knows the story of that wonderful girl.

Why, she was — she was almost supreme in several
details. She had a marvellous intellect; she had a
great heart, had a noble spirit, was absolutely pure
in her character, her feeling, her language, her words,
her everything — she was only eighteen years old.

Now put that heart into such a breast — eighteen
years old — and give it that masterly intellect which
showed in the face, and furnish it with that almost

269

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

godlike spirit, and what are you going to have?
The conventional Joan of Arc ? Not by any means.
That is impossible. I cannot comprehend any such
thing as that.

You must have a creature like that young and fair
and beautiful girl we just saw. And her spirit must
look out of the eyes. The figure should be — the
figure should be in harmony with all that, but, oh,
what we get in the conventional picture, and it is
always the conventional picture !

I hope you will allow me to say that your guild,
when you take the conventional, you have got it at
second hand. Certainly, if you had studied and
studied, then you might have something else as a
result, but when you have the common convention
you stick to that.

You cannot prevail upon the artist to do it; he
always gives you a Joan of Arc — the lovely creature
that started a great career at thirteen, but whose
greatness arrived when she was eighteen ; and merely
because she was a girl he cannot see the divinity in
her, and so he paints a peasant, a coarse and lubberly
figure — the figure of a cotton bale, and he clothes
that in the coarsest raiment of the peasant region —
just like a fish woman, her hair cropped like that of
a Russian peasant, and that face of hers, which
should be beautiful and which should radiate all the
glories which are in the spirit and in her heart — that
expression in that face is always just the fixed expres-
sion of a ham.

But now Mr. Beard has intimated a moment ago,
and so has Sir Purdon-Clarke also, that the artist,

270

JOAN OF ARC

the illustrator, does not often get the idea of the
man whose book he is illustrating. Here is a very
remarkable instance of the other thing in Mr. Beard,
who illustrated a book of mine. You may never
have heard of it. I will tell you about it now — A
Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

Now, Beard got everything that I put into that
book and a little more besides. Those pictures of
Beard's in that book — oh, from the first page to the
last is one vast sardonic laugh at the trivialities, the
servilities of our poor human race, and also at the
professions and the insolence of priestcraft and king-
craft — those creatures that make slaves of them-
selves and have not the manliness to shake it off.
Beard put it all in that book. I meant it to be there.
I put a lot of it there and Beard put the rest.

That publisher of mine in Hartford had an eye for
the pennies, and he saved them. He did not waste
any on the illustrations. He had a very good artist
— Williams — who had never taken a lesson in draw-
ing. Everything he did was original. The publisher
hired the cheapest wood-engraver he could find, and
in my early books you can see a trace of that. You
can see that if Williams had had a chance he would
have made some very good pictures. He had a good
heart and good intentions.

I had a character in the first book he illustrated —
The Innocents Abroad. That was a boy seventeen or
eighteen years old — Jack Van Nostrand — a New York
boy, who, to my mind, was a very remarkable creature.
I tried to get Williams to understand that boy, and
make a picture of Jack that would be worthy of Jack.

271

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

Jack was a most singular combination. He was
born and reared in New York here. He was as deli-
cate in his feelings, as clean and pure and refined in
his feelings as any lovely girl that ever was, but
whenever he expressed a feeling he did it in Bowery
slang, and it was a most curious combination — that
delicacy of his and that apparent coarseness. There
was no coarseness inside of Jack at all, and Jack, in
the course of seventeen or eighteen years, had
acquired a capital of ignorance that was marvellous
— ignorance of various things, not of all things. For
instance, he did not know anything about the Bible.
He had never been in Sunday-school. Jack got more
out of the Holy Land than anybody else, because the
others knew what they were expecting, but it was a
land of surprise to him.

I said in the book that we found him watching a
turtle on a log, stoning that turtle, and he was ston-
ing that turtle because he had read that "The song
of the turtle was heard in the land," and this turtle
wouldn't sing. It sounded absurd, but it was charged
on Jack as a fact, and as he went along through that
country he had a proper foil in an old rebel colonel,
who was superintendent and head engineer in a large
Sunday-school in Wheeling, West Virginia. That man
was full of enthusiasm wherever he went, and w^uld
stand and deliver himself of speeches, and Jack would
listen to those speeches of the colonel and wonder.

Jack had made a trip as a child almost across this
continent in the first overland stage-coach. That
man's name who ran that line of stages — well, I
declare that name is gone. Well, names will go.

272

JOAN OF ARC

Halliday — ah, that's the name — Ben Halliday,
your uncle [turning to Mr. Carnegie]. That was the
fellow — Ben Halliday — and Jack was full of admira-
tion at the prodigious speed that that line of stages
made — and it was good speed — one hundred and
twenty-five miles a day, going day and night, and
it was the event of Jack's life, and there at the Fords
of the Jordan the colonel was inspired to a speech
(he was always making a speech), so he called us up
to him. He called up five sinners and three saints.
It has been only lately that Mr. Carnegie beatified
me. And he said : ' ' Here are the Fords of the Jordan
— a monumental place. At this very point, when
Moses brought the children of Israel through — he
brought the children of Israel from Egypt through
the desert you see there — he guarded them through
that desert patiently, patiently during forty years,
and brought them to this spot safe and sound. There
you see — there is the scene of what Moses did."

And Jack said : " Moses who ? ' '

"Oh," he says, "Jack, you ought not to ask that!
Moses, the great lawgiver ! Moses, the great patriot
Moses, the great warrior! Moses, the great guide,
who, as I tell you, brought these people through
these three hundred miles of sand in forty years,
and landed them safe and sound."

Jack said: "There's nothin' in that! Three hun-
dred miles in forty years ! Ben Halliday would have
snaked 'em through in thirty-six hours."

Well, I was speaking of Jack's innocence, and it
was beautiful. Jack was not ignorant on all subjects.
That boy was a deep student in the history of Anglo-

273

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

Saxon liberty, and he was a patriot all the way
through to the marrow. There was a subject that
interested him all the time. Other subjects were of
no concern to Jack, but that quaint, inscrutable
innocence of his I could not get Williams to put into
the picture.

Yes, Williams wanted to do it. He said: "I will
make him as innocent as a virgin." He thought a
moment, and then said, "I will make him as inno-
cent as an unborn virgin," which covered the
ground.

I was reminded of Jack because I came across a
letter to-day which is over thirty years old that Jack
wrote. Jack was doomed to consumption. He was
very long and slim, poor creature, and in a year or
two after he got back from that excursion to the
Holy Land he went on a ride on horseback through
Colorado, and he did not last but a year or two.

He wrote this letter, not to me, but to a friend of
mine, and he said: "I have ridden horseback" —
this was three years after— "I have ridden horse-
back four hundred miles through a desert country
where you never see anything but cattle now and
then, and now and then a cattle station — ten miles
apart, twenty miles apart. Now you tell Clemens
that in all that stretch of four hundred miles I have
seen only two books — the Bible and Innocents
Abroad — the Bible in good repair.

I say that he had studied, and he had, the real
Saxon liberty, the acquirement of our liberty, and
Jack used to repeat some verses — I don't know where
they came from, but I thought of them to-day when

274

JOAN OF ARC

I saw this letter — that that boy could have been
talking of himself in those quoted lines from that
unknown poet :

"For he had sat at Sidney's feet

And walked with him in plain apart,
And through the centuries heard the beat
Of Freedom's march through Cromwell's heart."

And he was that kind of a boy. He should have
lived, and yet he should not have lived, because he
died at that early age — he couldn't have been more
than twenty — he had seen all there was to see in
the world that was worth the trouble of living in it ;
he had seen all of this world that is valuable; he
had seen all of this world that was illusion, and illu-
sion is the only valuable thing in it. He had arrived
at the point where presently the illusions would cease
and he would have entered upon the realities of life,
and God help the man that has arrived at that point.

275

TAXES AND MORALS

Address at Carnegie Hall, New York, January 22, 1906

At the twenty -fifth anniversary of the founding of Tuskegee
Institute by Booker Washington, Mr. Choate presided, and in intro-
ducing Mr. Clemens declared that he made play his work, and
that when he worked hardest he did so lying in bed.

I CAME here in the responsible capacity of police-
man to watch Mr. Choate. This is an occasion
of grave and serious importance, and it seems neces-
sary for me to be present, so that if he tried to work
off any statement that required correction, reduction,
refutation, or exposure, there would be a tried friend
of the public to protect the house. He has not made
one statement whose veracity fails to tally exactly
with my own standard. I have never seen a person
improve so. This makes me thankful and proud of
a country that can produce such men — two such men.
And all in the same country. We can't be with you
always ; we are passing away, and then — well, every-
thing will have to stop, I reckon. It is a sad thought.
But in spirit I shall still be with you. Choate, too —
if he can.

Every born American among the eighty millions,
let his creed or destitution of creed be what it may,
is indisputably a Christian to this degree — that his
moral constitution is Christian.

There are two kinds of Christian morals, one pri-
276

TAXES AND MORALS

vate and the other public. These two are so distinct,
so unrelated, that they are no more akin to each
other than are archangels and politicians. During
three hundred and sixty-three days in the year the
American citizen is true to his Christian private
morals, and keeps undefiled the nation's character
at its best and highest; then in the other two days
of the year he leaves his Christian private morals at
home and carries his Christian public morals to the
tax office and the polls, and does the best he can to
damage and undo his whole year's faithful and
righteous work. Without a blush he will vote for
an unclean boss if that boss is his party's Moses,
without compunction he will vote against the best
man in the whole land if he is on the other ticket.
Every year in a number of cities and States he helps
put corrupt men in office, whereas if he would but
throw away his Christian public morals, and carry
his Christian private morals to the polls, he could
promptly purify the public service and make the
possession of office a high and honorable distinction.
Once a year he lays aside his Christian private
morals and hires a ferry-boat and piles up his bonds
in a warehouse in New Jersey for three days, and gets
out his Christian public morals and goes to the tax
office and holds up his hands and swears he wishes he
may never-never if he's got a cent in the world, so
help him. The next day the list appears in the
papers — a column and a quarter of names, in fine
print, and every man in the list a billionaire and
member of a couple of churches. I know all those
people. I have friendly, social, and criminal rela-

277

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

tions with the whole lot of them. They never miss
a sermon when they are so's to be around, and they
never miss swearing-off day, whether they are so's
to be around or not.

I used to be an honest man. I am crumbling.
No — I have crumbled. When they assessed me at
$75,000 a fortnight ago I went out and tried to bor-
row the money, and couldn't; then when I found
they were letting a whole crop of millionaires live in
New York at a third of the price they were charging
me I was hurt, I was indignant, and said: "This is
the last feather. I am not going to run this town all
by myself." In that moment — in that memorable
moment — I began to crumble. In fifteen minutes
the disintegration was complete. In fifteen minutes
I had become just a mere moral sand pile; and I
lifted up my hand along with those seasoned and
experienced deacons and swore off every rag of per-
sonal property I've got in the world, clear down to
cork leg, glass eye, and what is left of my wig.

Those tax officers were moved; they were pro-
foundly moved. They had long been accustomed to
seeing hardened old grafters act like that, and they
could endure the spectacle; but they were expecting
better things of me, a chartered, professional moral-
ist, and they were saddened.

I fell visibly in their respect and esteem, and I
should have fallen in my own, except that I had
already struck bottom, and there wasn't any place
to fall to.

At Tuskegee they will jump to misleading con-
clusions from insufficient evidence, along with Doctor

278

TAXES AND MORALS

Parkhurst, and they will deceive the student with
the superstition that no gentleman ever swears.

Look at those good millionaires; aren't they gen-
tlemen? Well, they swear. Only once in a year,
maybe, but there's enough bulk to it to make up for
the lost time. And do they lose anything by it?
No, they don't; they save enough in three minutes
to support the family seven years. When they swear,
do we shudder? No — unless they say "damn!"
Then we do. It shrivels us all up. Yet we ought
not to feel so about it, because we all swear — every-
body. Including the ladies. Including Doctor
Parkhurst, that strong and brave and excellent
citizen, but superficially educated.

For it is not the word that is the sin, it is the spirit
back of the word. When an irritated lady says
"oh!" the spirit back of it is "damn!" and that is
the way it is going to be recorded against her. It
always makes me so sorry when I hear a lady swear
like that. But if she says "damn," and says it in
an amiable, nice way, it isn't going to be recorded
at all.

The idea that no gentleman ever swears is all
wrong; he can swear and still be a gentleman if he
does it in a nice and benevolent and affectionate
way. The historian, John Fiske, whom I knew well
and loved, was a spotless and most noble and upright
Christian gentleman, and yet he swore once. Not
exactly that, maybe; still, he — but I will tell you
about it.

One day, when he was deeply immersed in his
work, his wife came in, much moved and profoundly

279

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

distressed, and said: "I am sorry to disturb you,
John, but I must, for this is a serious matter, and
needs to be attended to at once."

Then, lamenting, she brought a grave accusation
against their little son. She said: "He has been
saying his Aunt Mary is a fool and his Aunt Martha
is a damned fool." Mr. Fiske reflected upon the
matter a minute, then said: "Oh, well, it's about the
distinction I should make between them myself."

Mr, Washington, I beg you to convey these teach-
ings to your great and prosperous and most benefi-
cent education institution, and add them to the
prodigal mental and moral riches wherewith you
equip your fortunate proteges for the struggle of life.

280

LAYMAN'S SERMON

The Young Men's Christian Association asked Mr. Clemens to
deliver a lay sermon at the Majestic Theatre, New York, March
4, 1906. More than five thousand young men tried to get into the
theatre, and in a short time traffic was practically stopped in the
adjacent streets. The police reserves had to be called out to thin the
crowd. Doctor Fagnani had said something before about the
police episode, and Mr. Clemens took it up.

I HAVE been listening to what was said here, and
there is in it a lesson of citizenship. You created
the police, and you are responsible for them. One
must pause, therefore, before criticising them too
harshly. They are citizens, just as we are. A little
of citizenship ought to be taught at the mother's
knee and in the nursery. Citizenship is what makes
a republic; monarchies can get along without it.
What keeps a republic on its legs is good citizenship.
Organization is necessary in all things. It is even
necessary in reform. I was an organization myself
once — for twelve hours. I was in Chicago a few
years ago about to depart for New York. There
were with me Mr. Osgood, a publisher, and a stenog-
rapher. I picked out a stateroom on a train, the
principal feature of which was that it contained the
privilege of smoking. The train had started but a
short time when the conductor came in and said that
there had been a mistake made, and asked that we
vacate the apartment. I refused, but when I went

281

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

out on the platform Osgood and the stenographer
agreed to accept a section. They were too modest.

Now, I am not modest. I was born modest, but it
didn't last. I asserted myself, insisted upon my
rights, and finally the Pullman conductor and the
train conductor capitulated, and I was left in
possession.

I went into the dining car the netft morning for
breakfast. Ordinarily I only care for coffee and rolls,
but this particular morning I espied an important-
looking man on the other side of the car eating
broiled chicken. I asked for broiled chicken, and I
was told by the waiter and later by the dining-car
conductor that there was no broiled chicken. There
must have been an argument, for the Pullman con-
ductor came in and remarked : ' ' If he wants broiled
chicken, give it to him. If you haven't got it on the
train, stop somewhere. It will be better for all con-
cerned!" I got the chicken.

It is from experiences such as these that you get
your education of life, and you string them into
jewels or into tinware, as you may choose. I have
received recently several letters asking my counsel
or advice. The principal request is for some incident
that may prove helpful to the young. There were a
lot of incidents in my career to help me long — some-
times they helped me along faster than I wanted
to go.

Here is such a request. It is a telegram from
Joplin, Missouri, and it reads : "In what one of your
works can we find the definition of a gentleman?"

I have not answered that telegram, either; I

282

LAYMAN'S SERMON

couldn't. I don't remember that I ever defined a
gentleman, but it seems to me that if any man has
just merciful and kindly instincts he would be a gen-
tleman, for he would need nothing else in the world.

I received the other day a letter from my old
friend, William Dean Howells — Ho wells, the head of
American literature. No one is able to stand with
him. He is an old, old friend of mine, and he writes
me, "To-morrow I shall be sixty-nine years old."
Why, I am surprised at Howells writing that ! I have
known him longer than that. I'm sorry to see a man
trying to appear so young. Let's see. Howells
now, "I see you have been burying Patrick. I sup-
pose he was old, too."

No, he was never old — Patrick. He came to us
thirty-six years ago. He was my coachman on the
morning that I drove my young bride to our new
home. He was a young Irishman, slender, tall, lithe,
honest, truthful, and he never changed in all his life.
He really was with us but twenty-five years, for he
did not go with us to Europe, but he never regarded
that as separation. As the children grew up he was
their guide. He was all honor, honesty, and affection.
He was with us in New Hampshire, with us last sum-
mer, and his hair was just as black, his eyes were
just as blue, his form just as straight, and his heart
just as good as on the day we first met. In all the
long years Patrick never made a mistake. He never
needed an order, he never received a command. He
knew. I have been asked for my idea of an ideal
gentleman, and I give it to you — Patrick McAleer.

283

MORALS AND MEMORY

Mr. Clemens was the guest of honor at a reception held at
Barnard College {Columbia University), March 7, 1906, by the
Barnard Union. One of the young ladies presented Mr. Clemens,
and thanked him for his amiability in coming to make them an
address. She closed with the expression of the great joy it gave
her fellow-collegians, "because we all love you."

IF any one here loves me, she has my sincere thanks.
Nay, if any one here is so good as to love me —
why, I'll be a brother to her. She shall have my
sincere, warm, unsullied aff ectio n. When I was com-
ing up in the car with the very kind young lady who
was delegated to show me the way, she asked me
what I was going to talk about. And I said I wasn't
sure. I said I had some illustrations, and I was going
to bring them in. I said I was certain to give those
illustrations, but that I hadn't the faintest notion
what they were going to illustrate.

Now, I've been thinking it over in this forest glade
[indicating the woods of Arcady on the scene setting],
and I've decided to work them in with something
about morals and the caprices of memory. That
seems to me to be a pretty good subject. You see,
everybody has a memory and it's pretty sure to
have caprices. And, of course, everybody has morals.

It's my opinion that every one I know has morals,
though I wouldn't like to ask. I know I have. But
I'd rather teach them than practice them any day.

284

MORALS AND MEMORY

"Give them to others" — that's my motto. Then
you never have any use for them when you're left
without. Now, speaking of the caprices of memory
in general, and of mine in particular, it's strange to
think of all the tricks this little mental process plays
on us. Here we're endowed with a faculty of mind
that ought to be more supremely serviceable to us
than them all. And what happens? This memory
of ours stores up a perfect record of the most useless
facts and anecdotes and experiences. And all the
things that we ought to know — that we need to
know — that we'd profit by knowing — it casts aside
with the careless indifference of a girl refusing her
true lover. It's terrible to think of this phenomenon.
I tremble in all my members when I consider all the
really valuable things that I've forgotten in seventy
years — when I meditate upon the caprices of my
memory.

There's a bird out in California that is one perfect
symbol of the human memory. I've forgotten the
bird's name (just because it would be valuable for
me to know it — to recall it to your own minds,
perhaps).

But this fool of a creature goes around collecting
the most ridiculous things you can imagine and stor-
ing them up. He never selects a thing that could
ever prove of the slightest help to him; but he goes
about gathering iron forks, and spoons, and tin cans,
and broken mouse-traps — all sorts of rubbish that is
difficult for him to carry and yet be any use when he
gets it. Why, that bird will go by a gold watch to
bring back one of those patent cake-pans.

285

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

Now, my mind is just like that, and my mind isn't
very different from yours — and so our minds are just
like that bird. We pass by what would be of ines-
timable value to us, and pack our memories with the
most trivial odds and ends that never by any chance,
under any circumstances whatsoever, could be of
the slightest use to any one.

Now, things that I have remembered are con-
stantly popping into my head. And I am repeatedly
startled by the vividness with which they recur to
me after the lapse of years and their utter useless-
ness in being remembered at all.

I was thinking over some on my way up here.
They were illustrations I spoke about to the young
lady on the way up. And I've come to the conclu-
sion, curious though it is, that I can use every one
of these freaks of memory to teach you all a lesson.
I'm convinced that each one has its moral. And I
think it's my duty to hand the moral on to you.

Now, I recall that when I was a boy I was a good
boy — I was a very good boy. Why, I was the best
boy in my school. I was the best boy in that little
Mississippi town where I lived. The population was
only about twenty million. You may not believe it,
but I was the best boy in that State — and in the
United States, for that matter.

But I don't know why I never heard any one say
that but myself. I always recognized it. But even
those nearest and dearest to me couldn't seem to see
it. My mother, especially, seemed to think there
was something wrong with that estimate. And she
never got over that prejudice.

286

MORALS AND MEMORY

Now, when my mother got to be eighty-five years
old her memory failed her. She forgot little threads
that hold life's patches of meaning together. She
was living out West then, and I went on to visit her.

I hadn't seen my mother in a year or so. And
when I got there she knew my face; knew I was
married ; knew I had a family, and that I was living
with them. But she couldn't, for the life of her, tell
my name or who I was. So I told her I was her boy.

"But you don't live with me," she said.

"No," said I, "I'm living in Hartford."

"What are you doing there?"

"Going to school."

"Large school?"

"Very large."

"All boys?"

"All boys."

"And how do you stand?" said my mother.

"I'm the best boy in that school," I answered.

"Well, " said my mother, with a return of her old
fire, "I'd like to know what the other boys are like."

Now, one point in this story is the fact that my
mother's mind went back to my school days, and
remembered my little youthful self -prejudice when
she'd forgotten everything else about me.

The other point is the moral. There's one there
that you will find if you search for it.

Now, here's something else I remember. It's about
the first time I ever stole a watermelon. "Stole" is
a strong word. Stole? Stole? No, I don't mean
that. It was the first time I ever withdrew a water-
melon, retired it from circulation — the first time I

287

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

ever extracted a watermelon. That is exactly the
word I want — "extracted." It is definite. It is
precise. It perfectly conveys my idea. Its use in
dentistry connotes the delicate shade of meaning I am
looking for. You know we never extract our own teeth.

And it was not my watermelon that I extracted.
I extracted that watermelon from a farmer's wagon
while he was inside negotiating with another cus-
tomer. I carried that watermelon to one of the
secluded recesses of the lumber-yard, and there I
broke it open.

It was a green watermelon.

Well, do you know when I saw that I began to feel
sorry — sorry — sorry. It seemed to me that I had
done wrong. I reflected deeply. I reflected that I
was young — I think I was just eleven. But I knew
that though immature I did not lack moral advance-
ment. I knew what a boy ought to do who had
extracted a watermelon — like that.

I considered George Washington, and what action
he would have taken under similar circumstances.
Then I knew there was just one thing to make me
feel right inside, and that was — Restitution.

So I said to myself: "I will do that. I will take
that green watermelon back where I got it from."
And the minute I had said it I felt that great moral
uplift that comes to you when you've made a noble
resolution.

So I gathered up the biggest fragments, and I
carried them back to the farmer's wagon, and I
restored the watermelon — what was left of it. And
I made him give me a good one in place of it, too.

288

MORALS AND MEMORY

And I told him he ought to be ashamed of himself
going around working off his worthless, old, green
watermelons on trusting purchasers who had to rely
on him. How could they tell from the outside
whether the melons were good or not? That was
his business. And if he didn't reform, I told him
I'd see that he didn't get any more of my trade —
nor anybody else's I knew, if I could help it.

You know that man was as contrite as a reviv-
alist's last convert. He said he was all broken up
to think I'd gotten a green watermelon. He prom-
ised me he would never carry another green water-
melon if he starved for it. And he drove off — a
better man.

Now, do you see what I did for that man? He
was on a downward path, and I rescued him. But
all I got out of it was a watermelon.

Yet I'd rather have that memory — just that mem-
ory of the good I did for that depraved farmer — than
all the material gain you can think of. Look at the
lesson he got! I never got anything like that from
it. But I ought to be satisfied. I was only eleven
years old, but I secured everlasting benefit to other
people.

The moral in this is perfectly clear, and I think
there's one in the next memory I'm going to tell you
about.

When I was seventeen I was very bashful, and a
sixteen-year-old girl came to stay a week with us.
She was a peach, and I was seized with a happiness
not of this world.

One evening my mother suggested that, to enter-
289

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

tain her, I take her to the theatre. I didn't really
like to, because I was seventeen and sensitive about
appearing in the streets with a girl. I couldn't see
my way to enjoying my delight in public. But we
went.

I didn't feel very happy. I couldn't seem to keep
my mind on the play. I became conscious, after
a while, that that was due less to my lovely company
than my boots. They were sweet to look upon, as
smooth as skin, but fitted ten times as close. I got
oblivious to the play and the girl and the other
people and everything but my boots until — I hitched
one partly off. The sensation was sensuously perfect.
I couldn't help it. I had to get the other off, partly.
Then I was obliged to get them off altogether, except
that I kept my feet in the legs so they couldn't get
away.

From that time I enjoyed the play. But the first
thing I knew the curtain came down, like that, with-
out my notice, and I hadn't any boots on. What's
more, they wouldn't go on. I tugged strenuously.
And the people in our row got up and fussed and
«aid things until the peach and I simply had to
triove on.

We moved — the girl on one arm and the boots
tinder the other.

We walked home that way, sixteen blocks, with
a retinue a mile long. Every time we passed a lamp-
post death gripped me at the throat. But we got
home — and I had on white socks.

I: I live to be nine hundred and ninety-nine years
old I don't suppose I could ever forget that walk.

290

MORALS AND MEMORY

I trust that you will carry away some good thought
from these lessons I have given you, and that the
memory of them will inspire you to higher things,
and elevate you to plans far above the old — and —
and —

And I tell you one thing, young ladies: I've had
a better time with you to-day than with that peach
fifty-three years ago.

291

WHEN IN DOUBT, TELL THE TRUTH

Mark Twain's speech at the dinner of the " Freundschaft Society,"
March 9, 1906, had as a basis the words of introduction used by
Toastmaster Frank, who, referring to Pudd'nhead Wilson, used the
phrase, "When in doubt, tell the truth"

MR. CHAIRMAN, MR. PUTZEL, AND GEN-
TLEMEN OF THE FREUNDSCHAFT,—
That maxim I did invent, but never expected it to
be applied to me. I meant to say, ''When you are
in doubt;" when I am in doubt myself I use more
sagacity.

Mr. Grout suggested that if I have anything to
say against Mr. Putzel, or any criticism of his career
or his character, I am the last person to come out on
account of that maxim and tell the truth. That is
altogether a mistake.

I do think it is right for other people to be virtuous
so that they can be happy hereafter, but if I knew
every impropriety that even Mr. Putzel has com-
mitted in his life, I would not mention one of them.
My judgment has been maturing for seventy years,
and I have got to that point where I know better
than that.

Mr. Putzel stands related to me in a very tender
way (through the tax office), and it does not behoove
me to say anything which could by any possibility
militate against that condition of things.

Now, that word — taxes, taxes, taxes ! I have heard
292

WHEN IN DOUBT, TELL THE TRUTH

it to-night. I have heard it all night. I wish some-
body would change that subject; that is a very sore
subject to me.

I was so relieved when Judge Leventritt did find
something that was not taxable — when he said that
the commissioner could not tax your patience. And
that comforted me. We've got so much taxation.
I don't know of a single foreign product that enters
this country untaxed except the answer to prayer.

On an occasion like this the proprieties require that
you merely pay compliments to the guest of the
occasion, and I am merely here to pay compliments
to the guest of the occasion, not to criticise him in
any way, and I can say only complimentary things
to him.

When I went down to the tax office some time ago,
for the first time in New York, I saw Mr. Putzel
sitting in the "Seat of Perjury." I recognized him
right away. I warmed to him on the spot. I didn't
know that I had ever seen him before, but just as
soon as I saw him I recognized him. I had met him
twenty-five years before, and at that time had
achieved a knowledge of his abilities and something
more than that.

I thought: "Now, this is the man whom I saw
twenty-five years ago." On that occasion I not only
went free at his hands, but carried off something
more than that. I hoped it would happen again.

It was twenty-five years ago when I saw him, a
young clerk in Putnam's book store. I went in there
and asked for George Haven Putnam, and handed
him my card, and then the young man said Mr.

293

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

Putnam was busy and I couldn't see him. Well, I
had merely called in a social way, and so it didn't
matter.

I was going out when I saw a great big, fat,
interesting-looking book lying there, and I took it
up. It was an account of the invasion of England
in the fourteenth century by the Preaching Friar,
and it interested me.

I asked him the price of it, and he said four dollars.

"Well," I said, "what discount do you allow to
publishers?"

He said : ' ' Forty per cent off. ' '

I said: "All right, I am a publisher."

He put down the figure, forty per cent off, on a
card.

Then I said: "What discount do you allow to
authors?"

He said: "Forty per cent off."

"Well," I said, "set me down as an author."

"Now," said I, "what discount do you allow to
the clergy?"

He said: "Forty per cent off."

I said to him that I was only on the road, and
that I was studying for the ministry. I asked him
wouldn't he knock off twenty per cent for that.
He set down the figure, and he never smiled once.

I was working off these humorous brilliancies on
him and getting no return — not a scintillation in his
eye, not a spark of recognition of what I was doing
there. I was almost in despair.

I thought I might try him once more, so I said:
"Now, I am also a member of the human race. Will

294

WHEN IN DOUBT, TELL THE TRUTH

you let me have the ten per cent off for that?" He
set it down, and never smiled.

Well, I gave it up. I said: " There is my card
with my address on it, but I have not any money
with me. Will you please send the bill to Hart-
ford?" I took up the book and was going away.

He said: "Wait a minute. There is forty cents
coming to you."

When I met him in the tax office I thought maybe
I could make something again, but I could not. But
I had not any idea I could when I came, and as it
turned out I did get off entirely free.

I put up my hand and made a statement. It gave
me a good deal of pain to do that. I was not used
to it. I was born and reared in the higher circles of
Missouri, and there we don't do such things — didn't
in my time, but we have got that little matter set-
tled — got a sort of tax levied on me.

Then he touched me. Yes, he touched me this
time, because he cried — cried! He was moved to
tears to see that I, a virtuous person only a year
before, after immersion for one year — during one
year in the New York morals — had no more con-
science than a millionaire.

29s

INTRODUCING DOCTOR VAN DYKE
(1906)

I AM here, ostensibly, to introduce to you the lec-
turer of the occasion, the Reverend Doctor van
Dyke, of Princeton University; not to tell you who
he is — you know that already; riot to praise his
delicious books — they praise themselves better than
any words of mine could do it for them. Then is
there any real use or advantage in my being here at
all? Yes; I am here to talk and put in the time
while Doctor van Dyke reflects upon what he is
going to say, and whether he had better say it or not.

Chance has furnished me a text — a text which
offers me an opportunity to teach, an opportunity
to be instructive; and if I have a passion for any-
thing, it is for teaching. It is noble to teach oneself;
it is still nobler to teach others — and less trouble.
My text is a telegram from the Daily Review, an
Illinois newspaper, which says, "In what book of
yours will we find a definition of a gentleman?"
This question has been asked me a number of times
by mail in the past month or two, and I have not
replied; but if it is now going to be taken up by
telegraph, it is time for me to say something, and I
think that this is the right time and place for it.

The source of these inquiries was an Associated
Press telegram of a month or so ago, which said, in

296

INTRODUCING DOCTOR VAN DYKE (1906)

substance, that a citizen of Joplin, Missouri, who
had just died, had left ten thousand dollars to be
devoted to the dissemination among young men of
Mark Twain's idea of the true gentleman. This was
a puzzle to me, for I had never in my life uttered in
print a definition of that word — a word which once
had a concrete meaning, but has no clear and definite
meaning now, either in America or elsewhere. In
England, long ago, and in America in early times the
term was compact and definite, and was restricted
to a certain grade of birth, and it had nothing to do
with character; a gentleman could commit all the
crimes and bestialities known to the Newgate Cal-
endar, and be shunned and despised by everybody,
great and small, and no one could dispute it. But
in our day how would you define that loose and
shackly and shadowy and colorless word? — in case
you had thirty-five years to do it in. None but a very
self-complacent and elaborately incompetent person
would ever try to define it; and then the result
wouldn't be worth the violent mental strain it had
cost.

The weeks drifted along, and I remained puzzled ;
but at last when this telegram came I suddenly
remembered ! Remembered that I had once defined
the word? Not at all. What I remembered was
this: In the first fortnight of March, four years ago,
a New York lady defined the word in a published
interview. The main feature of her definition was
that no man is a gentleman who hasn't had a college
education. Oh, dear me — Adam, for instance ! And
Arkwright — and Watt — and Stephenson — and Whit-

297

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

ney — and Franklin — and Fulton — and Morse — and
Elias Howe — and Edison — and Graham Bell — and
Lincoln — and Washington — and — and me. What a
project ! to select and set apart a majestic and monu-
mental class for the people's reverence and homage,
then degrade it, belittle it, make it trivial, make it
comical, make it grotesque, by leaving out of it the
makers of history, the uplifters of man, the creators
and preservers of civilizations! The idea of leaving
us out ! It was my privilege to laugh, if I did it
privately. Very well, I did it privately. Consider-
ing the fact that the person who proposes to define
that word must be equipped with almost limitless
knowledge and daring and placid self-confidence, it
seemed to me that the late Simon Hanks, of Cape
Cod, had surely changed his sex and was come again.
The poet says :

'The Lord knows all things, great and small;
With doubt He's never vexed;
Ah yes, the good Lord knows it all —
But Simon Hanks comes next."

The matter seemed settled. But the New York
papers have long known that no large question is
ever really settled until I have been consulted ; it is
the way they feel about it, and they show it by
always sending to me when they get uneasy; so the
interviewers came up to River dale to get the verdict.
I was in bed, trying to amuse the bronchitis, there-
fore I got myself excused. I said not a word upon
the subject to any one. Yet there was a long and
fictitious interview pretending to come from me, in
one of the papers the next morning — the only

298

INTRODUCING DOCTOR VAN DYKE (1906)

instance in which a paper on either side of the Atlan-
tic had treated me uncourteously and unfairly for
many years. I was made to speak in the first person
and to furnish my idea of what a gentleman is.

You will perceive that there is a sort of grotesque
and degraded humor about that situation. All
definers of the modern gentleman are agreed that
among his qualities must be honesty, courtesy, and
truthfulness. Very well, here is a journalist who
sends to me a forger to represent him, then prints
the forger's product and filches money with it from
his deceived readers — yet if I should assert that he
is not a gentleman his friends could quite properly
require me to prove it, and I couldn't do it; for I
don't know what a gentleman is — a gentleman on
the indefinite modern plan. It's the fourth dimen-
sion to me, with the unsquared circle and the nebular
theory added.

There is also another humorous detail or two about
the situation. The forged interview deceived and
beguiled that trusting and well-meaning citizen of
Joplin before he died, and pillaged his heirs after he
was in his grave. They can't get the bequeathed
money, for it has to go to the dissemination of my
definition of what a gentleman is. The proposed
class in gentlemanliness can't get it, for my defini-
tion doesn't exist and has never existed. The money
is tied up for good and all. I believe it is the most
dismally and pathetically and sardonically humorous
incident I have ever come across.

Now then, can't we define the American gentleman
at all? As a whole — no. We can define the best

299

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

part of him, the valuable part ; it is as far as we can
get. The rest of him is hazy, diffused, uncertain ; it
is this, that, and the other thing; it is everything
and nothing, according to Tom, Dick, and Harry's
undigested notion ; and when you've got the jumble
all jumbled together to suit you, if it still seems to
lack something, whitewash it with a college educa-
tion and call game.

What shall we say is the best part, the accepted
part, the essential part, of the American gentleman?
Let us say it is courtesy and a blemishless character.
What is courtesy? Consideration for others. Is
there a good deal of it in the American character?
So far as I have observed, no. Is it an American
characteristic? So far as I have observed, the most
striking, the most prominent, the most American of
all American characteristics is the poverty of it in
the American character. Even the foreigner loses
his kindly politeness as soon as we get him Ameri-
canized. When we have been abroad among either
the naked savages or the clothed civilized, for even so
brief a time as a year, the first thing we notice when
we get back home is the wanton and unprovoked
discourtesies that assail us at every turn. They
begin at the customs pier and they follow us every-
where. Such of you as have been abroad will feel,
with remembered pangs and cheek burnings, that I
am speaking the truth; the rest of you will confess
it some day when you come home from abroad. You
will step into the trolley with your heart so full of
thankfulness to be at home again that you can't
speak; you are so glad, so happy, so grateful, that

300

INTRODUCING DOCTOR VAN DYKE (1906)

the tears blur everything, and you say to yourself,
"Oh, am I really and truly at home once more?"
Then the conductor bawls out "Come, step lively,
will you!" and you realize that you are. You realize
that in no country on the planet, savage or civilized,
but your own could you hear your unoffending old
father and mother and your gentle young sister as-
sailed with that brutal insult ; also, that no people on
the planet but ours is meek enough to stand it. We
allow our commonest rights to be trampled under-
foot every day and everywhere ; among us citizenship
is an unknown virtue. We have never claimed to be the
Uncourteous Nation, the Unpolite Nation, I don't
know where, there being no competition. Is it because
we are also the Too-Modest Nation? Probably. Is
that why we still keep that old, quiet, courtly uninso-
lent, uncharacteristic E pluribus Unum for our nationa)
motto, instead of replacing it with an up-to-date one,
full of national character, "Come, step lively!"

I am working hard, day and night, without salary
or hope of applause, upon my high and self-appointed
task of reforming our national manners, and I ask
for your help. Am I polite, do you ask? Well . . . no.
I'm an American myself. Why don't I begin by reform-
ing my own manners ? I have already explained that
in the beginning. I said, it is noble to teach oneself,
but still nobler to teach others — and less trouble.

Having now finished this extraneous and unofficial
lecture, I invite the real lecturer to approach and de-
liver to you his message ; but I do it courteously ; you
will never hear me say to Reverend Doctor van Dyke,
whom I and the nation revere, "Come, step lively!"

301

BILLIARDS

Mr. Clemens attended a billiard tourney on the evening of April
24, 1906, and was called on to tell a story.

THE game of billiards has destroyed my natu-
rally sweet disposition. Once, when I was an
underpaid reporter in Virginia City, whenever I
wished to play billiards I went out to look for an
easy mark. One day a stranger came to town and
opened a billiard parlor. I looked him over casually.
When he proposed a game, I answered, "All right."

"Just knock the balls around a little so that I can
get your gait," he said; and when I had done so,
he remarked : * ' I will be perfectly fair with you. I'll
play you left-handed." I felt hurt, for he was cross-
eyed, freckled, and had red hair, and I determined to
teach him a lesson. He won first shot, ran out, took
my half dollar, and all I got was the opportunity to
chalk my cue.

"If you can play like that with your left hand," I
said, "I'd like to see you play with your right."

"Couldn't play at all," he said. "I'm left-handed."

302

"MARK TWAIN'S FIRST APPEARANCE"

On October 5, 1906, Mr. Clemens, following a musical recital by
his daughter in Norfolk, Conn., addressed her audience on the
subject of stage-fright. He thanked the people for making things
as easy as possible for his daughter's American debut as a contralto,
and then told of his first experience before the public.

MY heart goes out in sympathy to any one who
is making his first appearance before an audi-
ence of human beings. By a direct process of mem-
ory I go back forty years, less one month — for I'm
older than I look.

I recall the occasion of my first appearance. San
Francisco knew me then only as a reporter, and I
was to make my bow to San Francisco as a lecturer.
I knew that nothing short of compulsion would get
me to the theatre. So I bound myself by a hard-
and-fast contract so that I could not escape. I got
to the theatre forty-five minutes before the hour set
for the lecture. My knees were shaking so that I
didn't know whether I could stand up. If there is
an awful, horrible malady in the world, it is stage-
fright — and seasickness. They are a pair. I had
stage-fright then for the first and last time. I was
only seasick once, too. It was on a little ship on
which there were two hundred other passengers. I —
was — sick. I was so sick that there wasn't any left
for those other two hundred passengers.

It was dark and lonely behind the scenes in that
303

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

theatre, and I peeked through the little peek-holes
they have in theatre curtains and looked into the
big auditorium. That was dark and empty, too.
By-and-by it lighted up, and the audience began to
arrive.

I had got a number of friends of mine, stalwart
men, to sprinkle themselves through the audience
armed with big clubs. Every time I said anything
they could possibly guess I intended to be funny
they were to pound those clubs on the floor. Then
there was a kind lady in a box up there, also a good
friend of mine, the wife of the Governor. She was
to watch me intently, and whenever I glanced toward
her she was going to deliver a gubernatorial laugh
that would lead the whole audience into applause.

At last I began. I had the manuscript tucked
under a United States flag in front of me where I
could get at it in case of need. But I managed to
get started without it. I walked up and down — I
was young in those days and needed the exercise —
and talked and talked.

Right in the middle of the speech I had placed a
gem. I had put in a moving, pathetic part which
was to get at the hearts and souls of my hearers.
When I delivered it they did just what I hoped and
expected. They sat silent and awed. I had touched
them. Then I happened to glance up at the box
where the Governor's wife was — you know what
happened.

Well, after the first agonizing five minutes, my
stage-fright left me, never to return. I know if I
was going to be hanged I could get up and make a

304

"MARK TWAIN'S FIRST APPEARANCE"

good showing, and I intended to. But I shall never
forget my feelings before the agony left me, and I
got up here to thank you for her for helping my
daughter, by your kindness, to live through her first
appearance. And I want to thank you for you?
appreciation of her singing, which is, by-the-way,
hereditary.

3©5

IN AID OF THE BLIND

Address at a Public Meeting of the New York Association

for Promoting the Interests of the Blind, at

the Waldorf-Astoria, March 29, 1906

IF you detect any awkwardness in my movements
and infelicities in my conduct I will offer the
explanation that I never presided at a meeting of
any kind before in my life, and that I do find it out
of my line. I suppose I could do anything anybody
else could, but I recognized that experience helps,
and I do feel the lack of that experience. I don't
feel as graceful and easy as I ought to be in order to
impress an audience. I shall not pretend that I
know how to umpire a meeting like this, and I shall
just take the humble place of the Essex band.

There was a great gathering in a small New Eng-
land town about twenty-five years ago. I remember
that circumstance because there was something that
happened at that time. It was a great occasion.
They gathered in the milita and orators and every-
body from all the towns around. It was an extraor-
dinary occasion.

The little local paper threw itself into ecstasies of
admiration and tried to do itself proud from begin-
ning to end. It praised the orators, the militia, and
all the bands that came from everywhere, and all
this in honest country newspaper detail, but the

306

IN AID OF THE BLIND

writer ran out of adjectives toward the end. Having
exhausted his whole magazine of praise and glorifica-
tion, he found he still had one band left over. He
had to say something about it, and he said: "The
Essex band done the best it could."

I am an Essex band on this occasion, and I am
going to get through as well as inexperience and
good intentions will enable me. I have got all the
documents here necessary to instruct you in the
objects and intentions of this meeting and also of
the association which has called the meeting. But
they are too voluminous. I could not pack those
statistics into my head, and I had to give it up. I
shall have to just reduce all that mass of statistics
to a few salient facts. There are too many statistics
and figure for me. I never could do anything with
figures, never had any talent for mathematics, never
accomplished anything in my efforts at that rugged
study, and to-day the only mathematics I know is
multiplication, and the minute I get away up in that,
as soon as I reach nine times seven

[Mr. Clemens lapsed into deep thought for a
moment. He was trying to figure out nine times
seven, but it was a hopeless task, and he turned to
St. Clair McKelway, who sat near him. Mr. McKel-
way whispered the answer, and the speaker resumed :]

I've got it now. It's eighty-four. Well, I can get
that far all right with a little hesitation. After that
I am uncertain, and I can't manage a statistic.

"This association for the"

[Mr. Clemens was in another dilemma. Again he
was obliged to turn to Mr. McKelway.]

307

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

Oh yes, for promoting the interests of the blind.
It's a long name. If I could I would write it out for
you and let you take it home and study it, but I
don't know how to spell it. And Mr. Carnegie is
down in Virginia somewhere. Well, anyway, the
object of that association which has been recently
organized, five months ago, in fact, is in the hands
of very, very energetic, intelligent, and capable
people, and they will push it to success very surely,
and all the more surely if you will give them a little
of your assistance out of your pockets.

The intention, the purpose, is to search out all the
blind and find work for them to do so that they may
earn their own bread. Now it is dismal enough to
be blind — it is dreary, dreary life at best, but it can
be largely ameliorated by finding something for these
poor blind people to do with their hands. The time
passes so heavily that it is never day or night with
them, it is always night, and when they have to sit with
folded hands and with nothing to do to amuse or enter-
tain or employ their minds, it is drearier and drearier.

And then the knowledge they have that they must
subsist on charity, and so often reluctant charity, it
would renew their lives if they could have something
to do with their hands and pass their time and at the
same time earn their bread, and know the sweetness
of the bread which is the result of the labor of one's
own hands. They need that cheer and pleasure. It
is the only way you can turn their night into day,
to give them happy hearts, the only thing you can
put in the place of the blessed sun. That you can do
in the way I speak of.

308

IN AID OF THE BLIND

Blind people generally who have seen the light
know what it is to miss the light. Those who have
gone blind since they were twenty years old — their
lives are unendingly dreary. But they can be taught
to use their hands and to employ themselves at a
great many industries. That association from which
this draws its birth in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
has taught its blind to make many things. They
make them better than most people, and more honest
than people who have the use of their eyes. The
goods they make are readily salable. People like
them. And so they are supporting themselves, and
it is a matter of cheer, cheer. They pass their time
now not too irksomely as they formerly did.

What this association needs and wants is $15,000.
The figures are set down, and what the money is for,
and there is no graft in it or I would not be here. And
they hope to beguile that out of your pockets, and
you will find affixed to the program an opportu-
nity, that little blank which you will fill out and
promise so much money now or to-morrow or some
time. Then, there is another opportunity which is
still better, and that is that you shall subscribe an
annual sum.

I have invented a good many useful things in my
time, but never anything better than that of getting
money out of people who don't want to part with it.
It is always for good objects, of course. This is the
plan : When you call upon a person to contribute to
a great and good object, and you think he should
furnish about one thousand dollars, he disappoints
you as like as not. Much the best way to work him

309

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

to supply that thousand dollars is to split it into
parts and contribute, say a hundred dollars a year, or
fifty, or whatever the sum may be. Let him contrib-
ute ten or twenty a year. He doesn't feel that, but
he does feel it when you call upon him to contribute
a large amount. When you get used to it you would
rather contribute than borrow money.

I tried it in Helen Keller's case. Mr. Hutton wrote
me in 1896 or 1897 when I was in London and said:
"The gentleman who has been so liberal in taking
care of Helen Keller has died without making provi-
sion for her in his will, and now they don't know
what to do." They were proposing to raise a fund,
and he thought $50,000 enough to furnish an income
of $2,400 or $2,500 a year for the support of that
wonderful girl and her wonderful teacher, Miss Sul-
livan, now Mrs. Macy. I wrote to Mr. Hutton and
said: "Go on, get up your fund. It will be slow,
but if you want quick work, I propose this system,"
the system I speak of, of asking people to contribute
such and such a sum from year to year and drop out
whenever they please, and he would find there
wouldn't be any difficulty, people wouldn't feel the
burden of it. And he wrote back saying he had
raised the $2,400 a year indefinitely by that system
in a single afternoon. We would like to do some-
thing just like that to-night. We will take as many
checks as you care to give. You can leave your
donations in the big room outside.

I knew once what it was to be blind. I shall never
forget that experience. I have been as blind as any-
body ever was for three or four hours, and the suffer-

310

IN AID OF THE BLIND

ings that I endured and the mishaps and the acci-
dents that are burning in my memory make my
sympathy rise when I feel for the blind and always
shall feel. I once went to Heidelberg on an excursion.
I took a clergyman along with me, the Rev. Joseph
Twichell, of Hartford, who is still among the living
despite that fact. I always travel with clergymen
when I can. It is better for them, it is better for me.
And any preacher who goes out with me in stormy
weather and without a lightning rod is a good one.
The Reverend Twichell is one of those people filled
with patience and endurance, two good ingredients
for a man travelling with me, so we got along very
well together. In that old town they have not altered
a house nor built one in 1,500 years. We went to the
inn and they placed Twichell and me in a most colos-
sal bedroom, the largest I ever saw or heard of. It
was as big as this room.

I didn't take much notice of the place. I didn't
really get my bearings. I noticed Twichell got a
German bed about two feet wide, the kind in which
you've got to lie on your edge, because there isn't
room to lie on your back, and he was way down
south in that big room, and I was way up north at
the other end of it, with a regular Sahara in between.

We went to bed. Twichell went to sleep, but then
he had his conscience loaded and it was easy for him
to get to sleep. I couldn't get to sleep. It was one
of those torturing kinds of lovely summer nights
when you hear various kinds of noises now and then.
A mouse away off in the southwest. You throw
things at the mouse. That encourages the mouse.

311

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

But I couldn't stand it, and about two o'clock I got
up and thought I would give it up and go out in the
square where there was one of those tinkling foun-
tains, and sit on its brink and dream, full of romance.

I got out of bed, and I ought to have lit a candle,
but I didn't think of it until it was too late. It was
the darkest place that ever was. There has never
been darkness any thicker than that. It just lay in
cakes.

I thought that before dressing I would accumulate
my clothes. I pawed around in the dark and found
everything packed together on the floor except one
sock. I couldn't get on the track of that sock. It
might have occurred to me that maybe it was in the
wash. But I didn't think of that. I went excursion-
ing on my hands and knees. Presently I thought,
"I am never going to find it; I'll go back to bed
again." That is what I tried to do during the next
three hours. I had lost the bearings of that bed. I
was going in the wrong direction all the time. By-
and-by I came in collision with a chair and that
encouraged me.

It seemed to me, as far as I could recollect, there
was only a chair here and there and yonder, five or
six of them scattered over this territory, and I
thought maybe after I found that chair I might
find the next one. Well, I did. And I found another
and another and another. I kept going around on
my hands and knees, having those sudden collisions,
and finally when I banged into another chair I
almost lost my temper. And I raised up, garbed as
I was, not for public exhibition, right in front of a

312

IN AID OF THE BLIND

mirror fifteen or sixteen feet high. I hadn't noticed
the mirror; didn't know it was there.

Then I got down on my hands and knees and went
on another exploring expedition.

As far as I could remember there were six chairs
in that Oklahoma, and one table, a great big heavy-
table, not a good table to hit with your head when
rushing madly along. In the course of time I col-
lided with thirty-five chairs and tables enough to
stock that dining-room out there. It was a hospital
for decayed furniture, and it was in a worse condi-
tion when I got through with it. I went on and on,
and at last got to a place where I could feel my way
up, and there was a shelf. I knew that wasn't in
the middle of the room. Up to that time I was afraid
I had gotten out of the city.

I was very careful and pawed along that shelf,
and there was a pitcher of water about a foot high,
and it was at the head of Twichell's bed, but I didn't
know it. I felt that pitcher going and I grabbed at
it, but it didn't help any and came right down on
Twichell and nearly drowned him. But it woke him
up. I was grateful to have company on any terms.
He lit a match, and there I was, way down south
when I ought to have been back up yonder. My bed
was out of sight it was so far away. You needed a
telescope to find it. Twichell comforted me and I
scrubbed him off and we got sociable.

But that night wasn't wasted. I had my pedom-
eter on my leg. Twichell and I were in a pedometer
match. Twichell had longer legs than I. The only
way I could keep up was to wear my pedometer to

313

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

bed. I always walk in my sleep, and on this occasion
I gained sixteen miles on him. After all, 1 never
found that sock. I never have seen it from that day
to this. But that adventure taught me what it is
to be blind. That was one of the most serious occa-
sions of my whole life, yet I never can speak of it
without somebody thinking it isn't serious. You try
it and see how serious it is to be as the blind are and
I was that night.

[Mr. Clemens read several letters of regret. He
then introduced Joseph H. Choate, saying:]

It is now my privilege to present to you Mr.
Choate. I don't have to really introduce him. I
don't have to praise him, or to natter him. I could
say truly that in the forty-seven years I have been
familiarly acquainted with him he has always been
the handsomest man America has ever produced.
And I hope and believe he will hold the belt forty-
five years more. He has served his country ably,
faithfully, and brilliantly. He stands at the sum-
mit, at the very top in the esteem and regard of his
countrymen, and if I could say one word which would
lift him any higher in his countrymen's esteem and
affection, I would say that word whether it was true
or not.

3i4

SPELLING AND PICTURES

Address at the Annual Dinner of the Associated Press,
at the Waldorf-Astoria, September 18, 1906

I AM here to make an appeal to the nations in
behalf of the simplified spelling. I have come
here because they cannot all be reached except
through you. There are only two forces that can
carry light to all the corners of the globe — only two
— the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press
down here. I may seem to be flattering the sun,
but I do not mean it so; I am meaning only to be
just and fair all around. You speak with a million
voices; no one can reach so many races, so many
hearts and intellects, as you — except Rudyard Kip-
ling, and he cannot do it wit hour your help. If the
Associated Press will adopt and use our simplified
forms, and thus spread them to the ends of the earth,
covering the whole spacious planet with them as with
a garden of flowers, our difficulties are at an end.

Every day of the three hundred and sixty-five the
only pages of the world's countless newspapers that
are read by all the human beings and angels and
devils that can read, are these pages that are built
out of Associated Press despatches. And so I beg
you, I beseech you — oh, I implore you to spell them
in our simplified forms. Do this daily, constantly,
persistently, for three months — only three months —

31S

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

it is all I ask. The infallible result ? — victory, victory
all down the line. For by that time all eyes here and
above and below will have become adjusted to the
change and in love with it, and the present clumsy
and ragged forms will be grotesque to the eye and
revolting to the soul. And we shall be rid of phthisis
and phthisic and pneumonia and pneumatics, and
diphtheria and pterodactyl, and all those other insane
words which no man addicted to the simple Christian
life can try to spell and not lose some of the bloom
of his piety in the demoralizing attempt. Do not
doubt it. We are chameleons, and our partialities
and prejudices change places with an easy and blessed
facility, and we are soon wonted to the change and
happy in it.

Do I seem to be seeking the good of the world?
That is the idea. It is my public attitude ; privately
I am merely seeking my own profit. We all do it,
but it is sound and it is virtuous, for no public inter-
est is anything other or nobler than a massed accumu-
lation of private interests. In 1883, when the
simplified-spelling movement first tried to make a
noise, I was indifferent to it; more — I even irrever-
ently scoffed at it. What I needed was an object
lesson, you see. It is the only way to teach some
people. Very well, I got it. At that time I was
scrambling along, earning the family's bread on mag-
azine work at seven cents a word, compound words
at single rates, just as it is in the dark present. I
was the property of a magazine, a seven-cent slave
under a boiler-iron contract. One day there came a
note from the editor requiring me to write ten pages

316

SPELLING AND PICTURES

on this revolting text: ''Considerations concerning
the alleged subterranean holophotal extemporane-
ousness of the conchy liaceous superimbri cation of
the Ornithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the unintel-
ligibility of its plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects."

Ten pages of that. Each and every word a
seventeen- jointed vestibuled railroad train. Seven
cents a word. I saw starvation staring the family
in the face. I went to the editor, and I took a stenog-
rapher along so as to have the interview down in
black and white, for no magazine editor can ever
remember any part of a business talk except the
part that's got graft in it for him and the magazine.
I said, "Read that text, Jackson, and let it go on
the record; read it out loud." He read it: "Con-
siderations concerning the alleged subterranean
holophotal extemporaneousness of the conchylia-
ceous superimbrication of the Ornithorhyncus, as
foreshadowed by the unintelligibility of its plesiosau-
rian anisodactylous aspects."

I said, "You want ten pages of those rumbling,
great, long, summer thunderpeals, and you expect
to get them at seven cents a peal?"

He said, "A word's a word, and seven cents is the
contract; what are you going to do about it?"

I said, "Jackson, this is cold-blooded oppression.
What's an average English word?"

He said, "Six letters."

I said, "Nothing of the kind; that's French, and
includes the spaces between the words; an average
English word is four letters and a half. By hard,
honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my

3i7

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is
three letters and a half. I can put one thousand and
two hundred words on your page, and there's not
another man alive that can come within two hundred
of it. My page is worth eighty-four dollars to me.
It takes exactly as long to fill your magazine pages
with long words as it does with short ones— four
hours. Now, then, look at the criminal injustice of
this requirement of yours. I am careful, I am eco-
nomical of my time and labor. For the family's
sake I've got to be so. So I never write 'metropolis*
for seven cents, because I can get the same money
for 'city.' I never write 'policeman,' because I can
get the same price for 'cop.' And so on and so on.
I never write 'valetudinarian' at all, for not even
hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the
point where I will do a word like that for seven cents;
I wouldn't do it for fifteen. Examine your obscene
text, please; count the words."

He counted and said it was twenty-four. I asked
him to count the letters. He made it two hundred
and three.

I said, "Now, I hope you see the whole size of
your crime. With my vocabulary I would make
sixty words out of those two hundred and five let-
ters, and get four dollars and twenty cents for it;
whereas for your inhuman twenty-four I would get
only one dollar and sixty-eight cents. The pages of
these sky-scrapers of yours would pay me only about
three hundred dollars; in my simplified vocabulary
the same space and the same labor would pay me
eight hundred and forty dollars. I do not wish to

318

SPELLING AND PICTURES

work upon this scandalous job by the piece. I want
to be hired by the year." He coldly refused. I said :

"Then for the sake of the family, if you have no
feeling for me, you ought at least to allow me over-
time on that word extemporaneousness." Again he
coldly refused. I seldom say a harsh word to any one,
but I was not master of myself then, and I spoke right
out and called him an anisodactylous plesiosaurian
conchyliaceous Ornithorhyncus, and rotten to the
heart with holophotal subterranean extemporaneous-
ness. God forgive me for that wanton crime; he
lived only two hours.

From that day to this I have been a devoted and
hard-working member of the heaven-born institution,
the International Association for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Authors, and now I am laboring with Car-
negie's Simplified Committee, and with my heart in
the work. . . .

Now then, let us look at this mighty question
reasonably, rationally, sanely — yes, and calmly, not
excitedly. What is the real function, the essential
function, the supreme function, of language? Isn't
it merely to convey ideas and emotions ? Certainly.
Then if we can do it with words of fonetic brevity
and compactness, why keep the present cumbersome
forms? But can we? Yes. I hold in my hand the
proof of it. Here is a letter written by a woman, right
cut of her heart cf hearts. I think she never saw a
spelling book in her life. The spelling is her own.
There isn't a waste letter in it anywhere. It reduces
the fonetics to the last gasp — it squeezes the surplus-
age out of every word — there's no spelling that can

319

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

begin with it on this planet outside of the White
House. And as for the punctuation, there isn't any.
It is all one sentence, eagerly and breathlessly uttered,
without break or pause in it anywhere. The letter is
absolutely genuine — I have the proofs of that in my
possession 1 . I can't stop to spell the words for you,
but you can take the letter presently and comfort
your eyes with it. I will read the letter :

"Miss dear friend I took some Close into

the armerry and give them to you to Send too the
suffrers out to California and i Hate to truble you but
i got to have one of them Back it was a black oil wolle
Shevyott With a jacket to Mach trimed Kind of
Fancy no 38 Burst measure and passy menterry
acrose the front And the color i woodent Trubble you
but it belonged to my brothers wife and she is Mad
about it i thoght she was willing but she want she
says she want done with it and she was going to Wear
it a Spell longer she ant so free harted as what i am
and she Has got more to do with Than i have having
a Husband to Work and slave For her i gess you
remember Me I am shot and stout and light com-
plected i torked with you quite a spell about the suf-
frars and said it was orful about that erth quake I
shoodent wondar if they had another one rite off
seeine general Condision of the country is Kind of
Explossive i hate to take that Black dress away from
the suffrars but i will hunt round And see if i can get

1 Unfortunately for this statement, the letter later proved to be
a clever hoax, the work of Miss Grace Donworth.

Mark Twain enjoyed the joke and urged the author to continue
the letters and gather them in a book, which she did later.

320

SPELLING AND PICTURES

another One if i can i will call to the armerry for it
if you will jest lay it asside so no more at present
from your True freind
i liked your
appearance very Much"

Now you see what simplified spelling can do. It
can convey any fact you need to convey ; and it can
pour out emotions like a sewer. I beg you, I beseech
you, to adopt our spelling, and print all your des-
patches in it.

Now I wish to say just one entirely serious word:

I have reached a time of life, seventy years and a
half, where none of the concerns of this world have
much interest for me personally. I think I can speak
dispassionately upon this matter, because in the little
while that I have got to remain here I can get along
very well with these old-fashioned forms, and I don't
propose to make any trouble about it at all. I shall
soon be where they won't care how I spell so long
as I keep the Sabbath.

There are eighty-two millions of us people that
use this orthography, and it ought to be simplified
in our behalf, but it is kept in its present condition
to satisfy one million people who like to have their
literature in the old form. That looks to me to be
rather selfish, and we keep the forms as they are
while we have got one million people coming in here
from foreign countries every year and they have got
to struggle with this orthography of ours, and it keeps
them back and damages their citizenship for years
until they learn to spell the language, if they ever do
learn. This is merely sentimental argument.

321

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

People say it is the spelling of Chaucer and Spencer
and Shakespeare and a lot of other people who do
not know how to spell anyway, and it has been trans-
mitted to us and we preserved it and wish to preserve
it because of its ancient and hallowed associations.

Now, I don't see that there is any real argument
about that. If that argument is good, then it would
be a good argument not to banish the flies and the
cockroaches from hospitals because they have been
there so long that the patients have got used to them
and they feel a tenderness for them on account of
the associations.

•v, you see before you the wreck and ruin of
what was once a young person like yourselves. I am
exhausted by the heat of the day. I must take what
is left of this wreck and run out of your presence and
carry it away to my home and spread it out there and
sleep the sleep of the righteous. There is nothing
much left of me but my age and my righteousness,
but I leave with you my love and my blessing, and
may you always keep your youth.

322

COPYRIGHT

When the present copyright law was under discussion, Mr.
Clemens appeared in Washington, and sent Speaker Cannon the
following letter:

December 7, igo6.

" Dear Uncle Joseph. — Please get me the thanks of Congress,
not next week but right away. I*, is very necessary. Do accom-
plish this for your affectionate old friend right away — by persua-
sion if you can. by violence if you must, for it is imperatively
necessary that I get on the floor of the House for two or three
hours and talk to the members, man ty man, in behalf of sup-
port, encouragement, and protection of one of the nation's most
valuable assets and industries — its literature. I have arguments
with me — also a barrel with liquid in it.

"Give me a chance. Get me the thanks of Congress. Don't
wait for others — there isn't time; furnish them to me yourself
and let Congress ratify later. I have stave": r.d let

Congress alone for seventy -one years and am entitled to the
thanks. Congress knows this perfectly well, and I have long
felt hurt that this quite proper and earned expression of grat-
itude has been merely felt by the House and never publicly
uttered.

"Send me an order on the sergeant-at-arms quick. Y
shall I come?

::h love and a benediction,

UOC Twain."

Later in the da\ with Mr. 77 'swells . Edward Everett Hale. Thomas
Nelson Page, and a number of other authors, Mr. Clemens afj
before the copyright committee. The Mi Bill contemplated an
author's copyright for the term of his life and l there-

after, applying also for the benefit of artists, musicians, and others,
authors did most of the talking. F. D. Millet made a speech
• artists, and John Philip Sousa for the musicians.
Mr Clemens was the last speaker of the day, and its chief feature.

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

I HAVE read this bill. At least I have read such
portions as I could understand. Nobody but a
practiced legislator can read the bill and thoroughly
understand it, and I am not a practiced legislator.

I am interested particularly and especially in the
part of the bill which concerns my trade. I like that
^sion of copyright life to the author's life and
fifty years afterward. I think that would satisfy
any reasonable author, because it would take care of
his children. Let the grandchildren take care of
themselves. That would take care of my daughters,
and after that I am not particular. I shall then
have long been out of this struggle, independent of
it, indifferent to it.

It isn't objectionable to me that all the trades and
professions in the United States are protected by the
bill. I like that. They are all important and worthy,
and if we can take care of them under the Copyright
law I should like to see it done. I should like to see
oyster culture added, and anything else.

I am aware that copyright must have a limit,
because that is required by the Constitution of the
Ur. tes, which sets aside the earlier Constitu-

tion, which we call the decalogue. The decalogue
says you shall not take away from any man his profit,
.n't like to be obliged to use the harsh term. What
the decalogue really says is, "Thou shalt not steal,"
but I am trying to use more polite language.

The laws of England and America do take it away,

elect but one class, the people who create the

literature of the land. They always talk handsomely

about the literature of the land, always what a fine,

324

COPYRIGHT

great, monumental thing a great literature is, and in
the midst of their enthusiasm they turn around and
do what they can to discourage it.

I know we must have a limit, but forty-two years
is too much of a limit. I am quite unable to guess
why there should be a limit at all to the possession
of the product of a man's labor. There is no limit to
real estate.

Doctor Hale has suggested that a man might just
as well, after discovering a coal mine and working it
forty-two years, have the Government step in and
take it away.

What is the excuse? It is that the author who
produced that book has had the profit of it long
enough, and therefore the Government takes a profit
which does not belong to it and generously gives it
to the 88,000,000 of people. But it doesn't do any-
thing of the kind. It merely takes the author's
property, takes his children's bread, and gives the
publisher double profit. He goes on pubHshing the
book and as many of his confederates as choose to
go into the conspiracy do so, and they rear families
in affluence.

And they continue the enjoyment of those ill-gotten
gains generation after generation forever, for they
never die. In a few weeks or months or years I shall
be out of it, I hope under a monument. I hope I
shall not be entirely forgotten, and I shall subscribe
to the monument myself. But I shall not be caring
what happens if there are fifty years left of my copy-
right. My copyright produces annually a good deal
more than I can use, but my children can use it. I

325

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

can get along; I know a lot of trades. But that goes
to my daughters, who can't get along as well as I can
because I have carefully raised them as young ladies,
who don't know anything and can't do anything. I
hope Congress will extend to them the charity which
they have failed to get from me.

Why, if a man who is not even mad, but only
strenuous — strenuous about race suicide — should
come to me and try to get me to use my large politi-
cal and ecclesiastical influence to get a bill passed by
this Congress limiting families to twenty-two children
by one mother, I should try to calm him down. I
should reason with him. I should say to him, ' ' Leave
it alone. Leave it alone and it will take care of itself.
Only one couple a year in the United States can reach
that limit. If they have reached that limit let them
go right on. Let them have all the liberty they want.
In restricting that family to twenty-two children
you are merely conferring discomfort and unhappi-
ness on one family per year in a nation of 88,000,000,
which is not worth while."

It is the very same with copyright. One author
per year produces a book which can outlive the forty-
two-year limit ; that's all. This nation can't produce
two authors a year that can do it ; the thing is de-
monstrably impossible. All that the limited copyright
can do is to take the bread out of the mouths of the
children of that one author per year.

I made an estimate some years ago, when I appeared
before a committee of the House of Lords, that we
had published in this country since the Declaration
of Independence 220,000 books. They have all gone.

326

COPYRIGHT

They had all perished before they were ten years old.
It is only one book in iooo that can outlive the forty-
two-year limit. Therefore why put a limit at all?
You might as well limit the family to twenty-two
children.

If you recall the Americans in the nineteenth cen-
tury who wrote books that lived forty-two years you
will have to begin with Cooper; you can follow with
Washington Irving, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edgar
Allan Poe, and there you have to wait a long time.
You come to Emerson, and you have to stand still
and look further. You find Howells and T. B. Aldrich,
and then your numbers begin to run pretty thin, and
you question if you can name twenty persons in the
United States who in a whole century have written
books that would live forty-two years. Why, you
could take them all and put them on one bench there
[pointing]. Add the wives and children and you
could put the result on two or three more benches.

One hundred persons — that is the little, insignifi-
cant crowd whose bread and butter is to be taken
away for what purpose, for what profit to anybody?
You turn these few books into the hands of the pirate
and of the legitimate publisher, too, and they get the
profit that should have gone to the wife and children.

When I appeared before that committee of the
House of Lords the chairman asked me what limit
I would propose. I said, "Perpetuity." I could see
some resentment in his manner, and he said the idea
was illogical, for the reason that it has long ago been
decided that there can be no such thing as property
in ideas. I said there was property in ideas before

327

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

Queen Anne's time ; they had perpetual copyright. He
said, ' ' What is a book ? A book is just built from base
to roof on ideas, and there can be no property in it."

I said I wished he could mention any kind of prop-
erty in this planet that had a pecuniary value which
was not derived from an idea or ideas. He said real
estate. I put a supposititious case, a dozen English-
men who travel through South Africa and camp out,
and eleven of them see nothing at all ; they are men-
tally blind. But there is one in that party who
knows what this harbor means and what the lay of
the land means. To him it means that some day a
railway will go through here, and there on that harbor
a great city will spring up. That is his idea. And he
has another idea, which is to go and trade his last
bottle of Scotch whiskey and his last horse-blanket
to the principal chief of that region and buy a piece
of land the size of Pennsylvania. That was the value
of an idea that the day would come when the Cape
to Cairo Railway would be built.

Every improvement that is put upon the real
estate is the result of an idea in somebody's head.
The skyscraper is another idea; the railroad is
another; the telephone and all those things are
merely symbols which represent ideas. An andiron,
a wash tub, is the result of an idea that did not exist
before.

So if, as that gentleman said, a book does consist
solely of ideas, that is the best argument in the
world that it is property, and should not be under
any limitation at all. We don't ask for that. Fifty
years from now we shall ask for it.

328

COPYRIGHT

I hope the bill will pass without any deleterious
amendments. I do seem to be extraordinary inter-
ested in a whole lot of arts and things that I have
got nothing to do with. It is a part of my generous,
liberal nature; I can't help it. I feel the same sort
of charity to everybody that was manifested by a
gentleman who arrived at home at two o'clock in the
morning from the club and was feeling so perfectly
satisfied with life, so happy, and so comfortable, and
there was his house weaving, weaving, weaving
around. He watched his chance, and by and by
when the steps got in his neighborhood he made a
jump and climbed up and got on the portico.

And the house went on weaving and weaving and
weaving, but he watched the door, and when it came
around his way he plunged through it. He got to
the stairs, and when he went up on all fours the
house was so unsteady that he could hardly make
his way, but at last he got to the top and raised his
foot and put it on the top step. But only the toe
hitched on the step, and he rolled down and fetched
up on the bottom step, with his arm around the
newel-post, and he said : ' ' God pity the poor sailors
out at sea on a night like this."

329

EDUCATING THEATRE-GOERS

The children cf the Educational Alliance gave a performance of
"The Prince and the Pauper" on the afternoon of April 14, 1907,
in the theatre oj the Alliance Building in East Broadway. The
audience was composed of nearly one thousand children of the
neighborhood. Mr. Clemens, Mr. Eowells, and Mr. Daniel
Frohman were among the invited guests.

I HAVE not enjoyed a play so much, so heartily,
and so thoroughly since I played Miles Hendon
twenty -two years ago. I used to play in this piece
("The Prince and the Pauper") with my children,
who, twenty-two years ago, were little youngsters.
One of my daughters was the Prince, and a neighbor's
daughter was the Pauper, and the children of other
neighbors played other parts. But we never gave
such a performance as we have seen here to-day. It
would have been beyond us.

My late wife was the dramatist and stage-manager.
Our coachman was the stage-manager, second in
command. We used to play it in this simple way,
and the one who used to bring in the crown on a
cushion — he was a little f ellow then — is now a clergy-
man way up high — six to seven feet high — and grow-
ing higher all the time. We played it well, but not
as well as you see it here, for you see it done by
practically trained professionals.

I was especially interested in the scene which we
have just had, for Miles Hendon was my part. I

33o

EDUCATING THEATRE-GOERS

did it as well as a person could who never remembered
his part. The children all knew their parts. They
did not mind if I did not know mine. I could thread
a needle nearly as well as the player did whom you
saw to-day. The words of my part I could supply on
the spot. The words of the song that Miles Hendon
sang here I did not catch. But I was great in that song.

It was so fresh and enjoyable to make up a new
set of words each time that I played the part.

If I had a thousand citizens in front of me, I would
like to give them information, but you children
already know all that I have found out about the
Educational Alliance. It's like a man living within
thirty miles of Vesuvius and never knowing about
a volcano. It's like living for a lifetime in Buffalo,
eighteen miles from Niagara, and never going to see
the Falls. So I lived in New York and knew nothing
about the Educational Alliance.

This theatre is a part of the work, and furnishes
pure and clean plays. This theatre is an influence.
Everything in the world is accomplished by influ-
ences which train and educate. When you get to be
seventy-one and a half, as I am, you may think that
your education is over, but it isn't.

If we had forty theatres of this kind in this city
of four millions, how they would educate and elevate !
We should have a body of educated theatre-goers.

It would make better citizens, honest citizens.
One of the best gifts a millionaire could make would
be a theatre here and a theatre there. It would
make of you a real Republic, and bring about an
educational level.

33i

THE EDUCATIONAL THEATRE

On November 19, 1907, Mr. Clemens entertained a party of six
or seven hundred of his friends, inviting them to witness the repre-
sentation of "The Prince and the Pauper," played by boys and
girls of the East Side at the Children's Educational Theatre, New
York.

JUST a word or two to let you know how deeply
I appreciate the honor which the children who
are the actors and frequenters of this cozy play-
house have conferred upon me. They have asked
me to be their ambassador to invite the hearts and
brains of New York to come down here and see the
work they are doing. I consider it a grand distinc-
tion to be chosen as their intermediary. Between
the children and myself there is an indissoluble bond
of friendship.

I am proud of this theatre and this performance —
proud, because I am naturally vain — vain of myself
and proud of the children.

I wish we could reach more children at one time.
I am glad to see that the children of the East Side
have turned their backs on the Bowery theatres to
come to see the pure entertainments presented
here.

This Children's Theatre is a great educational
institution. I hope the time will come when it will
be part of every public school in the land. I may
be pardoned in being vain. I was born vain, I guess.

332

THE EDUCATIONAL THEATRE

[At this point the stage-manager's whistle interrupted
Mr. Clemens.] That settles it; there's my cue to
stop. I was to talk until the whistle blew, but it
blew before I got started. It takes me longer to get
started than most people. I guess I was born at
slow speed. My time is up, and if you'll keep quiet
for two minutes I'll tell you something about Miss
Herts, the woman who conceived this splendid idea.
She is the originator and the creator of this theatre.
Educationally, this institution coins the gold of young
hearts into external good.

[On April 23, 1908, he spoke again at the same place.]

I will be strictly honest with you ; I am only fit to
be honorary president. It is not to be expected that
I should be useful as a real president. But when it
comes to tilings ornamental I, of course, have no
objection. There is, of course, no competition. I
take it as a very real compliment because there are
thousands of children who have had a part in this
request. It is promotion in truth.

It is a thing worth doing that is- done here. You
have seen the children play. You saw how little
Sally reformed her burglar. She could reform any
burglar. She could reform me. This is the only
school in which can be taught the highest and most
difficult lessons — morals. In other schools the way
of teaching morals is revolting. Here the children
who come in thousands live through each part.

They are terribly anxious for the villain to get his
bullet, and that I take to be a humane and proper
sentiment. They spend freely the ten cents that is

333

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

not saved without a struggle. It comes out of the
candy money, and the money that goes for chewing-
gum and other necessaries of life. They make the
sacrifice freely. This is the only school which they
are sorry to leave.

334

BOOKS, AUTHORS, AND HATS

Address at the Pilgrims' Club Luncheon. Given in Honor

of Mr. Clemens at the Savoy Hotel,

London, June 25, 1907

Mr. Birrell, M.P., Chief Secretary for Ireland, in introducing
Mr. Clemens said: "We all love Mark Twain, and we are here
to tell him so. One more point — all the world knows it, and that
is why it is dangerous to omit it — our guest is a distinguished
citizen of the Great Republic beyond the seas. In America his
Huckleberry Finn and his Tom Sawyer are what Robinson Crusoe
and Tom Brown's School Days have been to us. They are racy
of the soil. They are books to which it is impossible to place
any period of termination. I will not speak of the classics —
reminiscences of much evil in our early lives. We do not meet
here to-day as critics with our appreciations and depreciations,
our twopenny little prefaces or our forewords. I am not going
to say what the world a thousand years hence will think of
Mark Twain. Posterity will take care of itself, will read what
it wants to read, will forget what it chooses to forget, and will
pay no attention whatsoever to our critical mumblings and
jumblings. Let us, therefore, be content to say to our friend and
guest that we are here speaking for ourselves and for our children,
to say what he has been to us. I remember in Liverpool, in 1 867,
first buying the copy, which I still preserve, of the celebrated
Jumping Frog. It had a few words of preface which reminded
me then that our guest in those days was called 'the wild
humorist of the Pacific slope,' and a few lines later down, 'the
moralist of the Main.' That was some forty years ago. Here
he is, still the humorist, still the moralist. His humor enlivens
and enlightens his morality, and his morality is all the better
for his humor. That is one of the reasons why we love him. I
am not here to mention any book of his — that is a subject of
dispute in my family circle, which is the best and which is the
next best — but I must put in a word, lest I should not be true

335

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

to myself — a terrible thing — for his Joan of Arc, a book of
chivalry, of nobility, and of manly sincerity for which I take
this opportunity of thanking him. But you can all drink this
toast, each one of you with his own intention. You can get into
it what meaning you like. Mark Twain is a man whom English
and Americans do well to honor. He is the true consolidator of
nations. His delightful humor is of the kind which dissipates
and destroys national prejudices. His truth and his honor, his
love of truth, and his love of honor, overflow all boundaries. He
has made the world better by his presence. We rejoice to see
him here. Long may he live to reap the plentiful harvest of
hearty, honest human affection 1"

PILGRIMS, I desire first to thank those under-
graduates of Oxford. When a man has grown
so old as I am, when he has reached the verge of
seventy-two years, there is nothing that carries him
back to the dreamland of his life, to his boyhood, like
recognition of those young hearts up yonder. And
so I thank them out of my heart. I desire to thank
the Pilgrims of New York also for their kind notice
and message which they have cabled over here. Mr.
Birrell says he does not know how he got here. But
he will be able to get away all right — [pointing at
Mr. Birrell 's empty glass] he has not drunk any-
thing since he came here. I am glad to know about
those friends of his, Otway and Chatterton — fresh,
new names to me. I am glad of the disposition he
has shown to rescue them from the evils of poverty,
and if they are still in London, I hope to have a talk
with them. For a while I thought he was going to
tell us the effect which my book had upon his growing
manhood. I thought he was going to tell us how
much that effect amounted to, and whether it really
made him what he now is, but with the discretion

336

BOOKS, AUTHORS, AND HATS

born of Parliamentary experience he dodged that,
and we do not know now whether he read the book
or not. He did that very neatly. I could not do it
any better myself.

My books have had effects, and very good ones,
too, here and there, and some others not so good.
There is no doubt about that. But I remember one
monumental instance of it years and years ago. Pro-
fessor Norton, of Harvard, was over here, and when
he came back to Boston I went out with Howells to
call on him. Norton was allied in some way by
marriage with Darwin. Mr. Norton was very gentle
in what he had to say, and almost delicate, and he
said: "Mr. Clemens, I have been spending some
time with Mr. Darwin in England, and I should like
to tell you something connected with that visit. You
were the object of it, and I myself would have been
very proud of it, but you may not be proud of it.
At any rate, I am going to tell you what it was, and
to leave to you to regard it as you please. Mr.
Darwin took me up to his bedroom and pointed out
certain things there — pitcher plants, and so on, that
he was measuring and watching from day to day —
and he said: 'The chambermaid is permitted to do
what she pleases in this room, but she must never
touch those plants and never touch those books on
that table by that candle. With those books I read
myself to sleep every night.' Those were your own
books." I said: "There is no question to my mind
as to whether I should regard that as a compliment
or not. I do regard it as a very great compliment
and a very high honor that that great mind, labor-

337

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

ing for the whole human race, should rest itself on
my books. I am proud that he should read himself
to sleep with them."

Now, I could not keep that to myself — I was so
proud of it. As soon as I got home to Hartford I
called up my oldest friend — and dearest enemy on
occasion — the Rev. Joseph Twichell, my pastor, and
I told him about that, and, of course, he was full of
interest and venom. Those people who get no com-
pliments like that feel like that. He went off. He
did not issue any applause of any kind, and I did
not hear of that subject for some time. But when
Mr. Darwin passed away from this life, and some
time after Darwin's Life and Letters came out, the
Rev. Mr. Twichell procured an early copy of that
work and found something in it which he considered
applied to me. He came over to my house — it was
snowing, raining, sleeting, but that did not make any
difference to Twichell. He produced the book, and
turned over and over, until he came to a certain
place, when he said: "Here, look at this letter from
Mr. Darwin to Sir Joseph Hooker." What Mr.
Darwin said — I give you the idea and not the very
words — was this : I do not know whether I ought to
have devoted my whole life to these drudgeries in
natural history and the other sciences or not, for
while I may have gained in one way I have lost in
another. Once I had a fine perception and apprecia-
tion of high literature, but in me that quality is
atrophied. "That was the reason," said Mr. Twichell,
"he was reading your books."

Mr. Birrell has touched lightly — very lightly, but
338

BOOKS, AUTHORS, AND HATS

in not an uncomplimentary way — on my position in
this world as a moralist. I am glad to have that
recognition, too, because I have suffered since I have
been in this town ; in the first place, right away, when
I came here, from a newsman going around with a
great red, highly displayed placard in the place of an
apron. He was selling newspapers, and there were
two sentences on that placard which would have
been all right if they had been punctuated ; but they
ran those two sentences together without a comma
or anything, and that would naturally create a wrong
impression, because it said, "Mark Twain arrives
Ascot Cup stolen." No doubt many a person was
misled by those sentences joined together in that
unkind way. I have no doubt my character has
suffered from it.. I suppose I ought to defend my
character, but how can I defend it ? I can say here
and now — and anybody can see by my face that I
am sincere, that I speak the truth — that I have never'
seen that Cup. I have not got the Cup — I did not
have a chance to get it. I have always had a good
character in that way. I have hardly ever stolen
anything, and if I did steal anything I had discretion
enough to know about the value of it first. I do not
steal things that are likely to get myself into trouble.
I do not think any of us do that. I know we all take
things — that is to be expected — but really, I have
never taken anything, certainly in England, that
amounts to any great thing. I do confess that when
I was here seven years ago I stole a hat, but that did
not amount to anything. It was not a good hat,
and was only a clergyman's hat, anyway.

339

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

I was at a luncheon party, and Archdeacon Wil-
berforce was there also. I dare say he is Archdeacon
now — he was a canon then — and he was serving in
the Westminster battery, if that is the proper term —
I do not know, as you mix military and ecclesiastical
things together so much. He left the luncheon table
before I did. He began this. I did steal his hat, but
he began by taking mine. I make that interjection
because I would not accuse Archdeacon Wilberforce
of stealing my hat — I should not think of it. I con-
fine that phrase to myself. He merely took my hat.
And with good judgment, too — it was a better hat
than his. He came out before the luncheon was over,
and sorted the hats in the hall, and selected one
which suited. It happened to be mine. He went
off with it. When I came out by-and-by there was
no hat there which would go on my head except his,
which was left behind. My head was not the cus-
tomary size just at that time. I had been receiving
a good many very nice and complimentary atten-
tions, and my head was a couple of sizes larger than
usual, and his hat just suited me. The bumps and
corners were all right intellectually. There were re-
sults pleasing to me — possibly so to him. He found
out whose hat it was, and wrote me saying it was pleas-
ant that all the way home, whenever he met anybody
his gravities, his solemnities, his deep thoughts, his elo-
quent remarks were all snatched up by the people he
met, and mistaken for brilliant humorisms.

I had another experience. It was not unpleasing.
I was received with a deference which was entirely
foreign to my experience by everybody whom I met,

340

BOOKS, AUTHORS, AND HATS

so that before I got home I had a much higher opinion
of myself than I have ever had before or since. And
there is in that very connection an incident which I
remember at that old date which is rather melan-
choly to me, because it shows how a person can
deteriorate in a mere seven years. It is seven years
ago. I have not that hat now. I was going down
Pali-Mall, or some other of your big streets, and I
recognized that that hat needed ironing. I went into
a big shop and passed in my hat, and asked that it
might be ironed. They were courteous, very cour-
teous, even courtly. They brought that hat back to
me presently very sleek and nice, and I asked how
much there was to pay. They replied that they did
not charge the clergy anything. I have cherished
the delight of that moment from that day to this.
It was the first thing I did the other day to go and
hunt up that shop and hand in my hat to have it
ironed. I said when it came back, "How much to
pay?" They said, "Ninepence." In seven years I
have acquired all that worldliness, and I am sorry
to be back where I was seven years ago.

But now I am chaffing and chaffing and chaffing
here, and I hope you will forgive me for that; but
when a man stands on the verge of seventy-two you
know perfectly well that he never reached that place
without knowing what this life is — heartbreaking
bereavement. And so our reverence is for our dead.
We do not forget them; but our duty is toward the
living; and if we can be cheerful, cheerful in spirit,
cheerful in speech and in hope, that is a benefit to
those who are around us.

34i

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

My own history includes an incident which will
always connect me with England in a pathetic way,
for when I arrived here seven years ago with my
wife and my daughter — we had gone around the
globe lecturing to raise money to clear of! a debt —
my wife and one of my daughters started across the
ocean to bring to England our eldest daughter. She
was twenty-four years of age and in the bloom of
young womanhood, and we w T ere unsuspecting. When
my wife and daughter — and my wife has passed from
this life since — when they had reached mid- Atlantic,
a cablegram — one of those heartbreaking cablegrams
which we all in our days have to experience — was
put into my hand. It stated that that daughter of
ours had gone to her long sleep. And so, as I say, I
cannot always be cheerful, and I cannot always be
chaffing; I must sometimes lay the cap and bells
aside, and recognize that I am of the human race
like the rest, and must have my cares and griefs.
And, therefore, I noticed what Mr. Birrell said — I
was so glad to hear him say it — something that was
in the nature of these verses here at the top of this

menu.

"He lit our life with shafts of sun
And vanquished pain.
Thus two great nations stand as one
In honoring Twain."

I am very glad to have those verses. I am very
glad and very grateful for what Mr. Birrell said in
that connection. I have received since I have been
here, in this one week, hundreds of letters from all
conditions of people in England — men, women, and

342

BOOKS, AUTHORS, AND HATS

children — and there is in them compliment, praise,
and, above all and better than all, there is in them a
note of affection. Praise is well, compliment is well,
but affection — that is the last and final and most
precious reward that any man can win, whether by
character or achievement, and I am very grateful to
have that reward. All these letters make me feel
that here in England — as in America — when I stand
under the English flag, I am not a stranger. I am
not an alien, but at home.

343

INDEPENDENCE DAY

The American Society in London gave a banquet, July 4, 1907,
at the Hotel Cecil. Ambassador Choate called on Mr. Clemens to
respond to the toast " The Day We Celebrate. 1 *

MR. CHAIRMAN, MY LORD, AND GEN-
TLEMEN, — Once more it happens, as it
has happened so often since I arrived in England a
week or two ago, that instead of celebrating the
Fourth of July properly as has been indicated, I
have to first take care of my personal character.

Sir Mortimer Durand still remains unconvinced.
Well, I tried to convince these people from the begin-
ning that I did not take the Ascot Cup; and as I
have failed to convince anybody that I did not take
the cup, I might as well confess I did take it and be
done with it. I don't see why this uncharitable feel-
ing should follow me everywhere, and why I should
have that crime thrown up to me on all occasions.
The tears that I have wept over it ought to have
created a different feeling than this — and, besides, I
don't think it is very right or fair that, considering
England has been trying to take a cup of ours for
forty years — I don't see why they should take so
much trouble when I tried to go into the business
myself.

Sir Mortimer Durand, too, has had trouble, through
going to a dinner here, and he has told you what he

344

INDEPENDENCE DAY

suffered in consequence. But what did he suffer?
He only missed his train and one night of discomfort,
and he remembers it to this day. Oh! if you could
only think what I have suffered from a similar cir-
cumstance. Two or three years ago, in New York,
with that Society there which is made up of people
from all British Colonies, and from Great Britain
generally, who were educated in British colleges and
British schools, I was on hand to respond to a toast
of some kind or other, and I did then what I have
been in the habit of doing, from a selfish motive, for
a long time, and that is, I got myself placed No. 3
in the list of speakers — then you get home early.

I had to go five miles upriver, and had to catch
a particular train or not get there. But see the
magnanimity which is born in me, which I have cul-
tivated all my life. A very famous and very great
British clergyman came to me presently, and he said :
1 ' I am away down in the list ; I have got to catch a
certain train this Saturday night; if I don't catch
that train I shall be carried beyond midnight and
break the Sabbath. Won't you change places with
me?" I said: "Certainly I will." I did it at once.
Now, see what happened. Talk about Sir Mortimer
Durand's sufferings for a single night ! I have suffered
ever since because I saved that gentleman from
breaking the Sabbath — yes, saved him. I took his
place, but I lost my train, and it was I who broke
the Sabbath. Up to that time I never had broken
the Sabbath in my life, and from that day to this I
never have kept it.

Oh! I am learning much here to-night. I find I
345

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

didn't know anything about the American Society —
that is, I didn't know its chief virtue. I didn't know
its chief virtue until his Excellency our Ambassador
revealed it — I may say, exposed it. I was intending
to go home on the 13 th of this month, but I look upon
that in a different light now. I am going to stay here
until the American Society pays my passage.

Our Ambassador has spoken of our Fourth of July
and the noise it makes. We have got a double Fourth
of July — a daylight Fourth and a midnight Fourth.
During the day in America, as our Ambassador has
indicated, we keep the Fourth of July properly in a
reverent spirit. We devote it to teaching our chil-
dren patriotic things — reverence for the Declaration
of Independence. We honor the day all through the
daylight hours, and when night comes we dishonor
it. Presently — before long — they are getting nearly
ready to begin now — on the Atlantic coast, when
night shuts down, that pandemonium will begin, and
there will be noise, and noise, and noise — all night
long — and there will be more than noise — there will
be people crippled, there will be people killed, there
will be people who will lose their eyes, and all through
that permission which we give to irresponsible boys
to play with firearms and fire-crackers, and all sorts
of dangerous things. We turn that Fourth of July,
alas! over to rowdies to drink and get drunk and
make the night hideous, and we cripple and kill
more people than you would imagine.

We probably began to celebrate our Fourth-of-
July night in that way one hundred and twenty-five
years ago, and on every Fourth-of-July night since

346

INDEPENDENCE DAY

these horrors have grown and grown, until now, in
our five thousand towns of America, somebody gets
killed or crippled on every Fourth-of-July night,
besides those cases of sick persons whom we never
hear of, who die as the result of the noise or the
shock. They cripple and kill more people on the
Fourth of July in America than they kill and cripple
in our wars nowadays, and there are no pensions for
these folk. And, too, we burn houses. Really we
destroy more property on every Fourth-of-July night
than the whole of the United States was worth one
hundred and twenty-five years ago. Why, our
Fourth of July is our day of mourning, our day of
sorrow ! Fifty thousand people who have lost friends,
or who have had friends crippled, receive that Fourth
of July, when it comes, as a day of mourning for the
losses they have sustained in their families.

I have suffered in that way myself. I have had
relatives killed in that way. One was in Chicago
years ago — an uncle of mine, just as good an uncle
as I have ever had, and I had lots of them — yes,
uncles to burn, uncles to spare. This poor uncle, full
of patriotism, opened his mouth to hurrah, and a
rocket went down his throat. Before that man could
ask for a drink of water to quench that thing, it
blew up and scattered him all over the forty-five
States, and — really, now, this is true — I know about
it myself — twenty-four hours after that it was rain-
ing buttons, recognizable as his, on the Atlantic sea-
board. A person cannot have a disaster like that
and be entirely cheerful the rest of his life. I had
another uncle, on an entirely different Fourth of

347

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

July, who was blown up that way, and really it
trimmed him as it would a tree. He had hardly a
limb left on him anywhere. All we have left now is
an expurgated edition of that uncle. But never mind
about these things; they are merely passing matters.
Don't let me make you sad.

Sir Mortimer Durand said that you, the English
people, gave up your colonies over there — got tired
of them — and did it with reluctance. Now I wish
you just to consider that he was right about that,
and that he had his reasons for saying that England
did not look upon our Revolution as a foreign war,
but as a civil war fought by Englishmen.

Our Fourth of July which we honor so much, and
which we love so much, and which we take so much
pride in, is an English institution, not an American
one, and it comes of a great ancestry. The first
Fourth of July in that noble genealogy dates back
seven centuries lacking eight years. That is the day
of the Great Charter — the Magna Charta — which
was born at Runnymede in the next to the last year
of King John, and portions of the liberties secured
thus by those hardy Barons from that reluctant
King John are a part of our Declaration of Inde-
pendence, of our Fourth of July, of our American
liberties. And the second of those Fourths of July
was not born until four centuries later, in Charles
the First's time, in the Bill of Rights, and that is
ours, that is part of our liberties. The next one was
still English, in New England, where they established
that principle which remains with us to this day, and
will continue to remain with us — no taxation with-

348

INDEPENDENCE DAY

out representation. That is always going to stand,
and that the English Colonies in New England
gave us.

The Fourth of July, and the one which you are
celebrating now, born in Philadelphia on the 4th of
July, 1776 — that is English, too. It is not American.
Those were English colonists, subjects of King
George III, Englishmen at heart, who protested
against the oppressions of the Home Government.
Though they proposed to cure those oppressions and
remove them, still remaining under the Crown, they
were not intending a revolution. The revolution
was brought about by circumstances which they
could not control. The Declaration of Independence
was written by a British subject, every name signed
to it was the name of a British subject. There was
not the name of a single American attached to the
Declaration of Independence — in fact, there was not
an American in the country in that day except the
Indians out on the plains. They were Englishmen,
all Englishmen — Americans did not begin until seven
years later, when that Fourth of July had become
seven years old, and then the American Republic
was established. Since then there have been Amer-
icans. So you see what we owe to England in the
matter of liberties.

We have, however, one Fourth of July which is
absolutely our own, and that is that great proclama-
tion issued forty years ago by that great American to
whom Sir Mortimer Durand paid that just and beau-
tiful tribute — Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's procla-
mation, which not only set the black slaves free. h\ic

319

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

set the white man free also. The owner was set free
from the burden and offence, that sad condition of
things where he was in so many instances a master
and owner of slaves when he did not want to be.
That proclamation set them all free. But even in
this matter England suggested it, for England had
set her slaves free thirty years before, and we fol-
lowed her example. We always followed her example,
whether it was good or bad.

And it was an English judge that issued that other
great proclamation, and established that great prin-
ciple that, when a slave, let him belong to whom he
may, and let him come whence he may, sets his foot
upon English soil, his fetters by that act fall away
and he is a free man before the world. We followed
the example of 1833, and we freed our slaves as I
have said.

It is true, then, that all our Fourths of July, and
we have five of them, England gave to us, except
that one that I have mentioned — the Emancipation
Proclamation, and, lest we forget, let us all remember
that we owe these things to England. Let us be able
to say to Old England, this great-hearted, venerable
old mother of the race, you gave us our Fourths of
July that we love and that we honor and revere, you
gave us the Declaration of Independence, which is
the Charter of our rights, you, the venerable Mother
of Liberties, the Protector of Anglo-Saxon Freedom
• — you gave us these things, and we do most honestly
thank you for them.

35o

THE SAVAGE CLUB DINNER

A portrait of Mr. Clemens, signed by all the members of the club
attending the dinner, was presented to him, July 6, 1907, and in
submitting the toast "The Health of Mark Twain" Mr. J. Scott
Stokes recalled the fact that he had read parts of Doctor Clemens' s
works to Harold Frederic during Frederic's last illness.

MR. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW-SAVAGES,
— I am very glad indeed to have that portrait.
I think it is the best one that I have ever had, and
there have been opportunities before to get a good
photograph. I have sat to photographers twenty-
two times to-day. Those sittings added to those
that have preceded them since I have been in Europe
— if we average at that rate — must have numbered
one hundred to two hundred sittings. Out of all
those there ought to be some good photographs.
This is the best I have had, and I am glad to have
your honored names on it. I did not know Harold
Frederic personally, but I have heard a great deal
about him, and nothing that was not pleasant and
nothing except such things as lead a man to honor
another man and to love him. I consider that it is
a misfortune of mine that I have never had the luck
to meet him, and if any book of mine read to him in
his last hours made those hours easier for him and
more comfortable, I am very glad and proud of that,
I call to mind such a case many years ago of an
English authoress, well known in her day, who wrote

35i

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

such beautiful child tales, touching and lovely in
every possible way. In a little biographical sketch
of her I found that her last hours were spent partly
in reading a book of mine, until she was no longer
able to read. That has always remained in my mind,
and I have always cherished it as one of the good
things of my life. I had read what she had written,
and had loved her for what she had done.

Stanley apparently carried a book of mine feloni-
ously away to Africa, and I have not a doubt that
it had a noble and uplifting influence there in the
wilds of Africa — because on his previous journeys
he never carried anything to read except Shakespeare
and the Bible. I did not know of that circumstance.
I did not know that he had carried a book of mine.
I only noticed that when he came back he was a
reformed man. I knew Stanley very well in those
old days. Stanley was the first man who ever
reported a lecture of mine, and that was in St. Louis.
He did it so thoroughly that I could never use
that lecture in St. Louis again. I met Stanley here
when he came back from that first expedition of his
which closed with the finding of Livingstone. You
remember how he would break out at the meetings
of the British Association, and find fault with what
people said, because Stanley had notions of his own,
and could not contain them. They had to come out
or break him up — and so he would go round and
address geographical societies. He was always on the
war-path in those days, and people always had to
have Stanley contradicting their geography for them
and improving it. But he always came back and sat

352

THE SAVAGE CLUB DINNER

drinking beer with me in the hotel up to two in the
morning, and he was then one of the most civilized
human beings that ever was.

I saw in a newspaper this evening a reference to an
interview which appeared in one of the papers the
other day, in which the interviewer said that I
characterized Mr. Birrell's speech the other day at
the Pilgrims' Club as "bully." Now, if you will
excuse me, I never use slang to an interviewer or
anybody else. That distresses me. Whatever I said
about Mr. Birrell's speech was said in English, as
good English as anybody uses. If I could not describe
Mr. Birrell's delightful speech without using slang I
would not describe it at all. I would close my mouth
and keep it closed, much as it would discomfort me.

Now that comes of interviewing a man in the first
person, which is an altogether wrong way to inter-
view him. It is entirely wrong because none of you,
I, or anybody else, could interview a man — could
listen to a man talking any length of time and then
go off and reproduce that talk in the first person.
It can't be done. What results is merely that the
interviewer gives the substance of what is said and
puts it in his own language and puts it in your
mouth. It will always be either better language than
you use or worse, and in my case it is always worse.
I have a great respect for the English language. I
am one of its supporters, its promoters, its elevators.
I don't degrade it. A slip of the tongue would be
the most that you would get from me. I have always
tried hard and faithfully to improve my English and
never to degrade it. I always try to use the best

353

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

English to describe what I think and what I feel, or
what I don't feel and what I don't think.

I am not one of those who in expressing opinions
confine themselves to facts. I don't know anything
that mars good literature so completely as too much
truth. Facts contain a deal of poetry, but you can't
use too many of them without damaging your litera-
ture. I love all literature, and as long as I am a
doctor of literature — I have suggested to you for
twenty years I have been diligently trying to improve
my own literature, and now, by virtue of the Univer-
sity of Oxford, I mean to doctor everybody else's.

Now I think I ought to apologize for my clothes.
At home I venture things that I am not permitted
by my family to venture in foreign parts. I was
instructed before I left home and ordered to refrain
from white clothes in England. I meant to keep
that command fair and clean, and I would have done
it if I had been in the habit of obeying instructions,
but I can't invent a new process in life right away.
I have not had white clothes on since I crossed the
ocean until now.

In these three or four weeks I have grown so tired
of gray and black that you have earned my gratitude
in permitting me to come as I have. I wear white
clothes in the depth of winter in my home, but I
don't go out in the streets in them. I don't go out
to attract too much attention. I like to attract
some, and always I would like to be dressed so that
I may be more conspicuous than anybody else.

If I had been an ancient Briton, I would not have
contented myself with blue paint, but I would have

354

THE SAVAGE CLUB DINNER

bankrupted the rainbow. I so enjoy gay clothes in
which women clothe themselves that it always grieves
me when I go to the opera to see that, while women
look like a flower-bed, the men are a few gray stumps
among them in their black evening dress. These are
two or three reasons why I wish to wear white clothes.
When I find myself in assemblies like this, with every-
body in black clothes, I know I possess something
that is superior to everybody else's. Clothes are
never clean. You don't know whether they are clean
or not, because you can't see.

Here or anywhere you must scour your head every
two or three days or it is full of grit. Your clothes
must collect just as much dirt as your hair. If you
wear white clothes you are clean, and your cleaning
bill gets so heavy that you have to take care. I am
proud to say that I can wear a white suit of clothes
without a blemish for three days. If you need any
further instruction in the matter of clothes I shall be
glad to give it to you. I hope I have convinced some
of you that it is just as well to wear white clothes as
any other kind. I do not want to boast. I only
want to make you understand that you are not clean.

As to age, the fact that I am nearly seventy-two
years old does not clearly indicate how old I am,
because part of every day — it is with me as with
you — you try to describe your age, and you cannot
do it. Sometimes you are only fifteen; sometimes
you are twenty-five. It is very seldom in a day that
I am seventy-two years old. I am older now some-
times than I was when I used to rob orchards; a
thing which I would not do to-day — if the orchards

355

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

were watched. I am so glad to be here to-night. I
am so glad to renew with the Savages that now
ancient time when I first sat with a company of this
club in London in 1872. That is a long time ago.
But I did stay with the Savages a night in London
long ago, and as I had come into a very strange land,
and was with friends, as I could see, that has always
remained in my mind as a peculiarly blessed eve-
ning, since it brought me into contact with men of
my own kind and my own feelings.

I am glad to be here, and to see you all again,
because it is very likely that I shall not see you
again. It is easier than I thought to come across
the Atlantic. I have been received, as you know, in
the most delightfully generous way in England ever
since I came here. It keeps me choked up all the
time. Everybody is so generous, and they do seem
to give you such a hearty welcome. Nobody in the
world can appreciate it higher than I do. It did not
wait till I got to London, but when I came ashore
at Tilbury the stevedores on the dock raised the first
welcome — a good and hearty welcome from the men
who do the heavy labor in the world, and save you
and me having to do it. They are the men who with
their hands build empires and make them prosper.
It is because of them that the others are wealthy
and can live in luxury. They received me with a
"Hurrah!" that went to my heart. They are the
men that build civilization, and without them no civi-
lization can be built. So I came first to the authors and
creators of civilization, and I blessedly end this happy
meeting with the Savages who destroy it.

356

CHARITY AND ACTORS

Address at the Actors' Fund Fair in the Metropolitan
Opera House, New York, May 6, 1907

Mr. Clemens, in his white suit, formally declared the fair open.
Mr. Daniel Frohman, in introducing Mr. Clemens, said:

"We intend to make this a banner week in the history of the
Fund, which takes an interest in every one on the stage, be he
actor, singer, dancer, or workman. We have spent more than
$40,000 during the past year. Charity covers a multitude of
sins, but it also reveals a multitude of virtues. At the opening
of the former fair we had the assistance of Edwin Booth and
Joseph Jefferson. In their place we have to-day that American
institution and apostle of wide humanity — Mark Twain."

AS Mr. Frohman has said, charity reveals a mul-
XjL titude of virtues. This is true, and it is to be
proved here before the week is over. Mr. Frohman
has told you something of the object and something
of the character of the work. He told me he would
do this — and he has kept his word! I had expected
to hear of it through the newspapers. I wouldn't
trust anything between Frohman and the newspapers
— except when it' s a case of charity !

You should all remember that the actor has been
your benefactor many and many a year. When you
have been weary and downcast he has lifted your
heart out of gloom and given you a fresh impulse.
You are all under obligation to him. This is your
opportunity to be his benefactor — to help provide

357

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

for him in his old age and when he suffers from
infirmities.

At this fair no one is to be persecuted to buy. If
you offer a twenty-dollar bill in payment for a pur-
chase of $i you will receive $19 in change. There
is to be no robbery here. There is to be no creed
here — no religion except charity. We want to raise
$250,000 — and that is a great task to attempt.

The President has set the fair in motion by press-
ing the button in Washington. Now your good
wishes are to be transmuted into cash.

By virtue of the authority in me vested I declare
the fair open. I call the game. Let the transmuting
begin !

358

FULTON DAY, JAMESTOWN

Address Delivered September 23, 1907

Lieutenant-Governor Ellyson, of Virginia, in introducing Mr.
Clemens, said:

"The people have come here to bring a tribute of affectionate
recollection for the man who has contributed so much to the
progress of the world and the happiness of mankind." As Mr.
Clemens came down to the platform the applause became louder
and louder, until Mr. Clemens held out his hand for silence. It
was a great triumph, and it was almost a minute after the
applause ceased before Mr. Clemens could speak. He attempted
it once, and when the audience noticed his emotion, it cheered
again loudly.

IADIES AND GENTLEMEN,— I am but human,
^j and when you give me a reception like that I
am obliged to wait a little while I get my voice.
When you appeal to my head, I don't feel it; but
when you appeal to my heart, I do feel it.

We are here to celebrate one of the greatest events
of American history, and not only in American his-
tory, but in the world's history.

Indeed it was — the application of steam by Robert
Fulton.

It was a world event — there are not many of them.
It is peculiarly an American event, that is true, but
the influence was very broad in effect. We should
regard this day as a very great American holiday.
We have not many that are exclusively American

359

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

holidays. We have the Fourth of July, which we
regard as an American holiday, but it is nothing of
the kind. I am waiting for a dissenting voice. All
great efforts that led up to the Fourth of July were
made, not by Americans, but by English residents of
America, subjects of the King of England.

They fought all the fighting that was done, they
shed and spilt all the blood that was spilt, in securing
to us the invaluable liberties which are incorporated
in the Declaration of Independence; but they were
not Americans. They signed the Declaration of Inde-
pendence; no American's name is signed to that
document at all. There never was an American such
as you and I are until the Revolution, when it had
all been fought out and liberty secured, after the
adoption of the Constitution, and the recognition of
the Independence of America by all powers.

While we revere the Fourth of July — and let us
always revere it, and the liberties it conferred upon
us — yet it was not an American event, a great Amer-
ican day.

It was an American who applied that steam suc-
cessfully. There are not a great many world events,
and we have our full share. The telegraph, telephone,
and the application of steam to navigation — these are
great American events.

To-day I have been requested, or I have requested
myself, not to confine myself to furnishing you with
information, but to remind you of things, and to
introduce one of the nation's celebrants.

Admiral Harrington here is going to tell you all
that I have left untold. I am going to tell you all

360

FULTON DAY, JAMESTOWN

that I know, and then he will follow up with such
rags and remnants as he can find, and tell you what
he knows.

No doubt you have heard a great deal about
Robert Fulton and the influences that have grown
from his invention, but the little steamboat is suffer-
ing neglect.

You probably do not know a great deal about that
boat. It was the most important steamboat in the
world. I was there and saw it. Admiral Harrington
was there at the time. It need not surprise you, for
he is not as old as he looks. That little boat was
interesting in every way. The size of it. The boat
was one [consults Admiral], he said ten feet long.
The breadth of that boat [consults Admiral], two
hundred feet. You see, the first and most important
detail is the length, then the breadth, and then the
depth; the depth of that boat was [consults again] —
the Admiral says it was a flat boat. Then her ton-
nage — you know nothing about a boat until you
know two more things: her speed and her tonnage.
We know the speed she made. She made four miles
— and sometimes five miles. It was on her initial
trip, on August n, 1807, that she made her initial
trip, when she went from [consults Admiral] Jersey
City — to Chicago. That's right. She went by way
of Albany. Now comes the tonnage of that boat.
Tonnage of a boat means the amount of displace-
ment; displacement means the amount of water a
vessel can shove in a day. The tonnage of man is
estimated by the amount of whiskey he can displace
in a day.

361

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

Robert Fulton named the Clermont in honor of his
bride, that is, Clermont was the name of the county
seat.

I feel that it surprises you that I know so much.
In my remarks of welcome of Admiral Harrington I
am not going to give him compliments. Compli-
ments always embarrass a man. You do not know
anything to say. It does not inspire you with words.
There is nothing you can say in answer to a compli-
ment. I have been complimented myself a great
many times, and they always embarrass me — I always
feel that they have not said enough.

The Admiral and myself have held public office,
and were associated together a great deal in a friendly
way in the time of Pocahontas. That incident where
Pocahontas saves the life of Smith from her father,
Powhatan's club, was gotten up by the Admiral and
myself to advertise Jamestown.

At that time the Admiral and myself did not have
the facilities of advertising that you have.

I have known Admiral Harrington in all kinds of
situations — in public service, on the platform, and
in the chain gang now and then — but it was a mis-
take. A case of mistaken identity. I do not think
it is at all a necessity to tell you Admiral Harring-
ton's public history. You know that it is in the his-
tories. I am not here to tell you anything about his
public life, but to expose his private life.

I am something of a poet. When the great poet
laureate, Tennyson, died, and I found that the place
was open, I tried to get it — but I did not get it. Any-
body can write the first line of a poem, but it is a

362

FULTON DAY, JAMESTOWN

very difficult task to make the second line rhyme with
the first. When I was down in Australia there were
two towns named Johnswood and Par-am. I made
this rhyme:

"The people of Johnswood are pious and good;
The people of Par-am they don't care a ."

I do not want to compliment Admiral Harrington,
but as long as such men as he devote their lives to the
public service the credit of the country will never
cease. I will say that the same high qualities, the
same moral and intellectual attainments, the same
graciousness of manner, of conduct, of observation,
and expression have caused Admiral Harrington to
be mistaken for me — and I have been mistaken for
him.

A mutual compliment can go no further, and I now
have the honor and privilege of introducing to you
Admiral Harrington.

363

THE ALPHABET AND SIMPLIFIED
SPELLING

Address at the Dinner Given to Mr. Carnegie at the

Dedication of the New York Engineers'

Club, December 9, 1907

Mr. Clemens was introduced by the president of the club, who,
quoting from the Mark Twain autobiography, recalled the day
when the distinguished writer came to New York with three dollars
in small change in his pockets and a ten-dollar bill sewed in his
clothes.

IT seems to me that I was around here in the
neighborhood of the Public Library about fifty
or sixty years ago.' I don't deny the circumstances,
although I don't see how you got it out of my auto-
biography, which was not to be printed until I am
dead, unless I'm dead now. I had that three dollars
in change, and I remember well the ten dollars
which was sewed in my coat. I have prospered
since. Now I have plenty of money and a disposi-
tion to squander it, but I can't. One of those trust
companies is taking care of it.

Now, as this is probably the last time that I shall
be out after nightfall this winter, I must say that I
have come here with a mission, and I would make
my errand of value.

Many compliments have been paid to Mr. Carnegie
to-night. I was expecting them. They are very
gratifying to me.

364

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

us an alphabet that we wouldn't have to spell with
at all. Why, there isn't a man who doesn't have to
throw out about fifteen hundred words a day when
he writes his letters because he can't spell them! It's
like trying to do a St. Vitus's dance with wooden
legs.

Now I'll bet there isn't a man here who can spell
" pterodactyl," not even the prisoner at the bar.
I'd like to hear him try once — but not in public, for
it's too near Sunday, when all extravagant histrionic
entertainments are barred. I'd like to hear him try
in private, and when he got through trying to spell
"pterodactyl" you wouldn't know whether it was a
fish or a beast or a bird, and whether it flew on its
legs or walked with its wings. The chances are that
he would give it tusks and make it lay eggs.

Let's get Mr. Carnegie to reform the alphabet,
and we'll pray for him — if he'll take the risk.

If we had adequate, competent vowels, with a
system of accents, giving to each vowel its own soul
and value, so every shade of that vowel would be
shown in its accent, there is not a word in any tongue
that we could not spell accurately. That would be
competent, adequate, simplified spelling, in contrast
to the clipping, the hair punching, the carbuncles,
and the cancers which go by the name of simplified
spelling. If I ask you what b-o-w spells you can't
tell me unless you know which b-o-w I mean, and it
is the same with r-o-w, and the whole family of words
which were born out of lawful wedlock and don't
know their own origin.

Now, if we had an alphabet that was adequate
366

ALPHABET AND SIMPLIFIED SPELLING

and competent, instead of inadequate and incompe-
tent, things would be different. Spelling reform has
only made it bald-headed and unsightly. There is the
whole tribe of them, "row" and "read" and "lead"
— a whole family who don't know who they are. I
ask you to pronounce s-o-w, and you ask me what
kind of a one.

If we had a sane, determinate alphabet, instead of
a hospital of comminuted eunuchs, you would know
whether one referred to the act of a man casting the
seed over the ploughed land or whether one wished
to recall the lady hog and the future ham.

It's a poor alphabet. I appoint Mr. Carnegie to
get after it, and leave simplified spelling alone. Sim-
plified spelling brought about sun spots, the San
Francisco earthquake, and the recent business depres-
sion, which we would never have had if spelling had
been left all alone.

Now, I hope I have soothed Mr. Carnegie and
made him more comfortable than he would have
been had he received only compliment after compli-
ment, and I wish to say to him that simplified spell-
ing is all right, but, like chastity, you can carry it
too far.

367

THE LAST LOTOS CLUB SPEECH

Delivered January ii, 1908

In introducing Mr. Clemens, Frank B. Lawrence, the President
of the Lotos Club, recalled the fact that the first club dinner in the
present club-house, some fourteen years ago, was in honor of

Mark Twain.

I WISH to begin this time at the beginning, lest
I forget it altogether; that is to say, I wish to
thank you for this welcome that you are giving, and
the welcome which you gave me seven years ago,
and which I forgot to thank you for at that time. I
also wish to thank you for the welcome you gave me
fourteen years ago, which I also forgot to thank you
for at the time.

I hope you will continue this custom to give me a
dinner every seven years before I join the hosts in
the other world — I do not know which world.

Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Porter have paid me many
compliments. It is very difficult to take compliments.
I do not care whether you deserve the compliments
or not, it is just as difficult to take them. The other
night I was at the Engineers' Club, and enjoyed the
sufferings of Mr. Carnegie. They were compliment-
ing him there ; there it was all compliments, and none
of them deserved. They say that you cannot live by
bread alone, but I can live on compliments.

I do not make any pretence that I dislike compli-
368

THE LAST LOTOS CLUB SPEECH

merits. The stronger the better, and I can manage
to digest them. I think I have lost so much by not
making a collection of compliments, to put them
away and take them out again once in a while.
When in England I said that I would start to collect
compliments, and I began there and I have brought
some of them along.

The first one of these lies — I wrote them down and
preserved them — I think they are mighty good and
extremely just. It is one of Hamilton Mabie's com-
pliments. He said that La Salle was the first one to
make a voyage of the Mississippi, but Mark Twain
was the first to chart, light, and navigate it for the
whole world.

If that had been published at the time that I issued
that book [Life on the Mississippi], it would have
been money in my pocket. I tell you, it is a talent
by itself to pay compliments gracefully and have
them ring true. It's an art by itself.

Here is another compliment by Albert Bigelow
Paine, my biographer. He is writing four octavo
volumes about me, and he has been at my elbow two
and one-half years.

I just suppose that he does not know me, but says
he knows me. He says "Mark Twain is not merely
a great writer, a great philosopher, a great man; he
is the supreme expression of the human being, with
every human strength — and weakness." What a
talent for compression ! It takes a genius in compres-
sion to compact as many facts as that.

W.D.Howells spoke of me as first of Hartford, and ul-
timately of the solar system, not to say of the universe.

369

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

You know how modest Howells is. If it can be
proved that my fame reaches to Neptune and Saturn,
that will satisfy even me. You know how modest
and retiring Howells seems to be, but deep down he
is as vain as I am.

Mr. Howells had been granted a degree at Oxford,
whose gown was red. He had been invited to an
exercise at Columbia, and upon inquiry had been
told that it was usual to wear the black gown. Later
he had found that three other men wore bright gowns,
and he had lamented that he had been one of the
black mass, and not a red torch.

Edison wrote: "The average American loves his
family. If he has any love left over for some other
person, he generally selects Mark Twain."

Now here's the compliment of a little Montana
girl which came to me indirectly. She was in a room
in which there was a large photograph of me. After
gazing at it steadily for a time, she said :

"We've got a John the Baptist like that." She
also said: "Only ours has more trimmings."

I suppose she meant the halo. Now here is a gold
miner's compliment. It is forty-two years old. It
was my introduction to an audience to which I lec-
tured in a log school-house. There were no ladies
there. I wasn't famous then. They didn't know
me. Only the miners were there, with their breeches
tucked into their boot-tops and with clay all over
them. They wanted some one to introduce me, and
they selected a miner, who protested, saying:

"I don't know anything about this man. Any-
how, I only know two things about him. One is, he

37o

THE LAST LOTOS CLUB SPEECH

has never been in jail, and the other is, I don't know
why."

There's one thing I want to say about that English
trip. I knew his Majesty the King of England long
years ago, and I didn't meet him for the first time
then. One thing that I regret was that some news-
papers said I talked with the Queen of England with
my hat on. I don't do that with any woman. I did
not put it on until she asked me to. Then she told
me to put it on, and it's a command there. I thought
I had carried my American democracy far enough.
So I put it on. I have no use for a hat, and never
did have.

Who was it who said that the police of London
knew me? Why, the police know me everywhere.
There never was a day over there when a policeman
did not salute me, and then put up his hand and
stop the traffic of the world. They treated me as
though I were a duchess.

The happiest experience I had in England was at
a dinner given in the building of the Punch publica-
tion, a humorous paper which is appreciated by all
Englishmen. It was the greatest privilege ever
allowed a foreigner. I entered the dining-room of
the building, where those men get together who have
been running the paper for over fifty years. We
were about to begin dinner when the toastmaster
said: "Just a minute; there ought to be a little
ceremony." Then there was that meditating silence
for a while, and out of a closet there came a beautiful
little girl dressed in pink, holding in her hand the
original of a cartoon of me, published in the previous

37i

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

week's paper, Mr. Punch, offering me welcome to
England. It broke me all up. I could not even say
" Thank you." That was the prettiest incident of
the dinner, the delight of all that wonderful table.
When she was about to go, I said, "My child, you
are not going to leave me; I have hardly got
acquainted with you." She replied, "You know
I've got to go; they never let me come in here
before, and they never will again." That is one of
the beautiful incidents that I cherish.

[At the conclusion of his speech, and while the
diners were still cheering him, Colonel Porter brought
forward the red-and-gray gown of the Oxford "doc-
tor," and Mr. Clemens was made to don it. The
diners rose to their feet in their enthusiasm. With
the mortar board on his head, and looking down
admiringly at himself, Mr. Twain said :]

I like that gown. I always did like red. The
redder it is the better I like it. I was born for a
savage. Now, whoever saw any red like this? There
is no red outside the arteries of an archangel that
could compare with this. I know you all envy me.
I am going to have luncheon shortly with ladies — just
ladies. I will be the only lady of my sex present, and I
shall put on this gown and make those ladies look dim.

[Mr. Clemens then, by request, gave the closing
remarks of an address which he had delivered at a
farewell dinner tendered him, July 10, 1907, by the
Lord Mayor of Liverpool.]

Home is dear to us all, and now I am departing
to my own home beyond the ocean. Oxford has con-

372

THE LAST LOTOS CLUB SPEECH

ferred upon me the loftiest honor that has ever fallen
to my share of this life's prizes. It is the very one I
would have chosen, as outranking all and any others
the one more precious to me than any and all others'
within the gift of man or state. During my four
weeks' sojourn in England I have had another lofty
honor, a continuous honor, an honor which has flowed
serenely along, without halt or obstruction, through
all these twenty-six days, a most moving and pulse-
stirnng honor-the heartfelt grip of the hand, and
the welcome that does not descend from the pale-
gray matter of the brain, but rushes up with the red
blood from the heart. It makes me proud, and some-
times it makes me humble, too . . . Many and many
a year ago I gathered an incident from Dana's Two
Years Before the Mast. It was like this: There was
a presumptuous little self-important skipper in a
coasting sloop, engaged in the dried-apple and
kitchen-furniture trade, and he was always hailing
every ship that came in sight. He did it just to hear
himself talk and to air his small grandeur. One day
a majestic Indiaman came ploughing by with course
on course of canvas towering into the sky, her decks
and yards swarming with sailors, her hull burdened
to the Plimsoll line with a rich freightage of precious
spices, lading the breezes with gracious and mysterious
odors of the Orient. It was a noble spectacle, a sub-
lime spectacle! Of course, the little skipper popped
into the shrouds and squeaked out a hail, ' ' Ship ahoy I
What ship is that? And whence and whither?" In
a deep and thunderous bass the answer came back
through the speaking trumpet, "The Begum, of

373

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

Bengal, one hundred and forty-two days out from
Canton, homeward bound! What ship is that?"
Well, it just crushed that poor little creature's vanity
flat, and he squeaked back most humbly, ' ' Only the
Mary Ann, fourteen hours out from Boston, bound
for Kittery Point — with nothing to speak of!" Oh,
what an eloquent word, that "only," to express the
depths of his humbleness! That is just my case.
During just one hour in the twenty -four — not more —
I pause and reflect in the stillness of the night with
the echoes of your English welcome still lingering in
my ears, and then I am humble. Then I am properly
meek, and for that little while I am only the Mary
Ann, fourteen hours out, cargoed with vegetables
and tinware; but during all the twenty- three hours
my vain self-complacency rides high on the white
crest of your approval, and then I am a stately
Indiaman, ploughing the great seas under a cloud
of canvas and laden with the kindest words that
have ever been vouchsafed to any wandering alien
in this world, I think; then my twenty-six fortunate
days on this old mother soil seem to be multiplied
by six, and I am the Begum of Bengal, one hundred
and forty-two days out from Canton, homeward
bound!

374

BOOKSELLERS

Address at banquet on Wednesday evening, May 20, 1908, of
the American Booksellers 1 Association, which included most of the
leading booksellers of America, held at the rooms of the Aldine
Association, New York.

THIS annual gathering of booksellers from all
over America comes together ostensibly to eat
and drink, but really to discuss business; therefore
I am required to talk shop. I am required to furnish
a statement of the indebtedness under which I lie to
you gentlemen for your help in enabling me to earn
my living. For something over forty years I have
acquired my bread by print, beginning with The
Innocents Abroad, followed at intervals of a year or
so by Roughing It, Tom Sawyer, Gilded Age, and so
on. For thirty -six years my books were sold by
subscription. You are not interested in those years,
but only in the four which have since followed.
The books passed into the hands of my present pub-
lishers at the beginning of 1904, and you then became
the providers of my diet. I think I may say, with-
out flattering you, that you have done exceedingly
well by me. Exceedingly well is not too strong a
phrase, since the official statistics show that in four
years you have sold twice as many volumes of my
venerable books as my contract with my publishers
bound you and them to sell in five years. To your

375

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

sorrow you are aware that frequently, much too fre-
quently, when a book gets to be five or ten years old
its annual sale shrinks to two or three hundred copies,
and after an added ten or twenty years ceases to sell.
But you sell thousands of my moss-backed old
books every year — the youngest of them being books
that range from fifteen to twenty-seven years old,
and the oldest reaching back to thirty-five and forty.

By the terms of my contract my publishers had to
account to me for 50,000 volumes per year for five
years, and pay me for them whether they sold them
or not. It is at this point that you gentlemen come
in, for it was your business to unload 250,000 volumes
upon the public in five years if you possibly could.
Have you succeeded? Yes, you have — and more.
For in four years, with a year still to spare, you have
sold the 250,000 volumes, and 240,000 besides.

Your sales have increased each year. In the first
year you sold 90,328; in the second year, 104,851;
in the third, 133,975 ; in the fourth year — which was
last year — you sold 160,000. The aggregate for the
four years is 500,000 volumes, lacking 11,000.

Of the oldest book, The Innocents Abroad, — now
forty years old — you sold upward of 46,000 copies in
the four years; of Roughing It — now thirty-eight
years old, I think— you sold 40,334; oi Tom Sawyer,
41,000. And so on.

And there is one thing that is peculiarly gratifying
to me: the Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc is a
serious book; I wrote it for love, and never expected
it to sell, but you have pleasantly disappointed me
in that matter. In your hands its sale has increased

376

BOOKSELLERS

each year. In 1904 you sold 1726 copies; in 1905
2445; in 1906, 5381; and last year, 6574.

Last February, when Rudyard Kipling was ill in
America, the sympathy which was poured out to
him was genuine and sincere, and I believe that which
cost Kipling so much will bring England and America
closer together. I have been proud and pleased to
see this growing affection and respect between the
two countries. I hope it will continue to grow, and,
please God, it will continue to grow. I trust we
authors will leave to posterity, if we have nothing
else to leave, a friendship between England and
America that will count for much. I will now con-
fess that I have been engaged for the past eight days
in compiling a toast. I have brought it here to lay
at your feet. I do not ask your indulgence in pre-
senting it, but for your applause.

Here it is: "Since England and America may be
joined together in Kipling, may they not be severed
in 'Twain.'"

377

EDUCATION AND CITIZENSHIP

On the evening of May 14, 1908, the alumni of the College of the
City of New York celebrated the opening of the new college buildings
at a banquet in the Waldorf-Astoria. Mr. Clemens followed
Mayor McClellan.

I AGREED when the Mayor said that there was
not a man within hearing who did not agree that
citizenship should be placed above everything else,
even learning.

Have you ever thought about this? Is there a
college in the whole country where there is a chair
of good citizenship? There is a kind of bad citizen-
ship which is taught in the schools, but no real good
citizenship taught. There are some which teach
insane citizenship, bastard citizenship, but that is
all. Patriotism ! Yes ; but patriotism is usually the
refuge of the scoundrel. He is the man who talks
,the loudest.

You can begin that chair of citizenship in the
College of the City of New York. You can place
it above mathematics and literature, and that is where
it belongs.

We used to trust in God. I think it was in 1863
,that some genius suggested that it be put upon the
gold and silver coins which circulated among the
rich. They didn't put it on the nickels and coppers
because they didn't think the poor folks had any
trust in God.

378

EDUCATION AND CITIZENSHIP

Good citizenship would teach accuracy of thinking
and accuracy of statement. Now, that motto on the
coin is an overstatement. Those Congressmen had
no right to commit this whole country to a theolog-
ical doctrine. But since they did, Congress ought to
state what our creed should be.

There was never a nation in the world that put its
whole trust in God. It is a statement made on insuf-
ficient evidence. Leaving out the gamblers, the
burglars, and the plumbers, perhaps we do put our
trust in God after a fashion. But, after all, it is an
overstatement.

If the cholera or black plague should come to these
shores, perhaps the bulk of the nation would pray
to be delivered from it, but the rest would put then-
trust in the Health Board of the City of New York.

I read in the papers within the last day or two of
a poor young girl who they said was a leper. Did
the people in that populous section of the country
where she was— did they put their trust in God?
The girl was afflicted with the leprosy, a disease
which cannot be communicated from one person to
another.

Yet, instead of putting their trust in God, they
harried that poor creature, shelterless and friendless,
from place to place, exactly as they did in the Middle
Ages, when they made lepers wear bells, so that
people could be warned of their approach and avoid
them. Perhaps those people in the Middle Ages
thought they were putting their trust in God.

The President ordered the removal of that motto
from the coin, and I thought that it was well. I

379

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

thought that overstatement should not stay there.
But I think it would better read, "Within certain
judicious limitations we trust in God," and if there
isn't enough room on the coin for this, why, enlarge
the coin.

Now I want to tell a story about jumping at con-
clusions. It was told to me by Bram Stoker, and it
concerns a christening. There was a little clergyman
who was prone to jump at conclusions sometimes.
One day he was invited to officiate at a christening.
He went. There sat the relati ves — intelligent-looking
relatives they were. The little clergyman's instinct
came to him to make a great speech. He was given
to flights of oratory that way — a very dangerous
thing, for often the wings which take one into clouds
of oratorical enthusiasm are wax and melt up there,
and down you come.

But the little clergyman couldn't resist. He took
the child in his arms, and, holding it, looked at it a
moment. It wasn't much of a child. It was little
like a sweet potato. Then the little clergyman waited
impressively, and then : " I see in your countenances, ' '
he said, "disappointment of him. I see you are dis-
appointed with this baby. Why? Because he is so
little. My friends, if you had but the power of look-
ing into the future you might see that great things
may come of little things. There is the great ocean,
holding the navies of the world, which comes from
little drops of water no larger than a woman's tears.
There are the great constellations in the sky, made
up of little bits of stars. Oh, if you could consider
his future you might see that he might become the

380

EDUCATION AND CITIZENSHIP

greatest poet of the universe, the greatest warrior
the world has ever known, greater than Caesar, than
Hannibal, than — er — er" (turning to the father) —
" what's his name?"

The father hesitated, then whispered back: "His
name? Well, his name is Mary Ann."

381

DINNER TO WHITELAW REID

Address at the Dinner in Honor of Ambassador Reid,
Given by the Pilgrims' Club of New York
on February 19, 1908

I AM very proud to respond to this toast, as it
recalls the proudest day of my life. The delightful
hospitality shown me at the time of my visit to
Oxford I shall cherish until I die. In that long and
distinguished career of mine I value that degree
above all other honors. When the ship landed even
the stevedores gathered on the shore and gave an
English cheer. Nothing could surpass in my life
the pleasure of those four weeks. No one could pass
by me without taking my hand, even the policemen.
I've been in all the principal capitals of Christen-
dom in my life, and have always been an object of
interest to policemen. Sometimes there was sus-
picion in their eyes, but not always. With their
puissant hand they would hold up the commerce of
the world to let me pass.

I noticed in the papers this afternoon a despatch
from Washington, saying that Congress would imme-
diately pass a bill restoring to our gold coinage the
motto "In God We Trust." I'm glad of that; I'm
glad of that. I was troubled when that motto was
removed. Sure enough, the prosperities of the whole
nation went down in a heap when we ceased to

382

DINNER TO WHITELAW REID

trust in God in that conspicuously advertised way.
I knew there would be trouble. And if Pierpont
Morgan hadn't stepped in 1 — Bishop Lawrence may
now add to his message to the old country that we
are now trusting in God again. So we can discharge
Mr. Morgan from his office with honor.

Mr. Reid said an hour or so ago something about
my ruining my activities last summer. They are not
ruined, they are renewed. I am stronger now — much
stronger. I suppose that the spiritual uplift I received
increased my physical power more than anything I
ever had before. I was dancing last night at 12.30
o'clock.

Mr. Choate has mentioned Mr. Reid's predecessors.
Mr. Choate's head is full of history, and some of it
is true, too. I enjoyed hearing him tell about the
list of the men who had the place before he did. He
mentioned a long list of those predecessors, people I
never heard of before, and elected five of them to the
Presidency by his own vote. I'm glad and proud to
find Mr. Reid in that high position, because he didn't
look it when I knew him forty years ago. I was talk-
ing to Reid the other day, and he showed me my
autograph on an old paper twenty years old. I
didn't know I had an autograph twenty years ago.
Nobody ever asked me for it.

I remember a dinner I had long ago with Whitelaw
Reid and John Hay at Reid's expense. I had an-
other last summer when I was in London at the

1 Refers to the panic of 1907 when J. Pierpont Morgan, George
F. Baker, and other downtown bankers tided the country through
a financial crisis.

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

embassy that Choate blackguards so. I'd like to
live there.

Some of us don't appreciate what this country can
do. There's John Hay, Reid, Choate, and me. This
is the only country in the world where youth, talent
and energy can reach such heights. It shows what
we could do without means, and what people can do
with talent and energy when they find it in people
like us.

When I first came to New York they were all
struggling young men, and I am glad to see that
they have got on in the world. I knew John Hay
when I had no white hairs in my head and more hair
than Reid has now. Those were days of joy and
hope. Reid and Hay were on the staff of the Tribune.
I went there once in that old building, and I looked
all around, and I finally found a door ajar and looked
in. It wasn't Reid or Hay there, but it was Hor-
ace Greeley. Those were the days when Horace
Greeley was a king. That was the first time I ever
saw him and the last. I only stayed a minute. I
could have stayed longer if I had wanted to, but I
didn't want to.

I was admiring him when he stopped and seemed
to realize that there was a fine presence there some-
where. He looked at me a moment, and said : * 'What
in H — do you want ? "

Well, I couldn't think of what I wanted, so I
retired.

But later Hay rose, and you know what summit
Whitelaw Reid has reached, and you see me. Those
two men have regulated troubles of nations and con-

384

DINNER TO WHITELAW REID

ferred peace upon mankind. And in my humble
way, of which I am quite vain, I was the principal
moral force in all those great international move-
ments. These great men illustrated what I say.
Look at us great people — we all come from the dregs
of society. That's what can be done in this country.
That's what this country does for you.

Choate here — he hasn't got anything to say, but
he says it just the same, and he can do it so felici-
tously, too. I said long ago he was the handsomest
man America ever produced. May the progress of
civilization always rest on such distinguished men as
it has in the past !

385

COURAGE

At a beefsteak dinner, given by artists, caricaturists, and humor-
ists of New York City, April 18, 1908, Mr. Clemens, Mr. H. H.
Rogers, and Mr. Patrick McCarren were the guests of honor. Each
wore a white apron, and each made a short speech.

IN the matter of courage we all have our limits.
There never was a hero who did not have his
bounds. I suppose it may be said of Nelson and all
the others whose courage has been advertised that
there came times in their lives when their bravery-
knew it had come to its limit.

I have found mine a good many times. Some-
times this was expected — often it was unexpected.
I know a man who is not afraid to sleep with a rattle-
snake, but you could not get him to sleep with a
safety-razor.

I never had the courage to talk across a long, nar-
row room. I should be at the end of the room facing
all the audience. If I attempt to talk across a room
I find myself turning this way and that, and thus at
alternate periods I have part of the audience behind
me. You ought never to have any part of the audi-
ence behind you; you never can tell what they are
going to do.

I'll sit down.

386

QUEEN VICTORIA

Address to the British Schools and Universities Club, at

Delmonico's, Monday, May 25, 1908, in Honor of

Queen Victoria's Birthday

Mr. Clemens told the story of his duel with a rival editor: how
he practised firing at a barn door and failed to hit it, but a friend
of his took off the head of a little bird at thirty-five yards and attrib-
uted the shot to Mark Twain. The duel did not take place. Mr.
Clemens continued as follows:

YOU do me a high honor, indeed, in selecting
me to speak of my country in this commem-
oration of the birthday of that noble lady whose life
was consecrated to the virtues and the humanities
and to the promotion of lofty ideals, and was a model
upon which many a humbler life was formed and
made beautiful while she lived, and upon which
many such lives will still be formed in the genera-
tions that are to come — a life which finds its just
image in the star which falls out of its place in the
sky and out of existence, but whose light still streams
with unfaded luster across the abysses of space long
after its fires have been extinguished at their source.
As a woman the Queen was all that the most
exacting standards could require. As a far-reaching
and effective beneficent moral force she had no peer
in her time among either monarchs or commoners.
As a monarch she was without reproach in her great
office. We may not venture, perhaps, to say so

387

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

sweeping a thing as this in cold blood about any
monarch that preceded her upon either her own
throne or upon any other. It is a colossal eulogy,
but it is justified.

In those qualities of the heart which beget affec-
tion in all sorts and conditions of men she was rich,
surprisingly rich, and for this she will still be remem-
bered and revered in the far-off ages when the polit-
ical glories of her reign shall have faded from vital
history and fallen to a place in that scrap-heap of
unverifiable odds and ends which we call tradition.
Which is to say, in briefer phrase, that her name
will live always. And with it her character — a fame
rare in the history of thrones, dominions, principal-
ities, and powers, since it will not rest upon harvested
selfish and sordid ambitions, but upon love, earned
and freely vouchsafed. She mended broken hearts
where she could, but she broke none.

What she did for us in America in our time of storm
and stress we shall not forget, and whenever we call
it to mind we shall always remember the wise and
righteous mind that guided her in it and sustained
and supported her — Prince Albert's. We need not
talk any idle talk here to-night about either possible
or impossible war between the two countries; there
will be no war while we remain sane and the son of
Victoria and Albert sits upon the throne. In con-
clusion, I believe I may justly claim to utter the
voice of my country in saying that we hold him in
deep honor, and also in cordially wishing him a long
life and a happy reign.

388

ROGERS AND RAILROADS

At a Banquet Given Mr. H. H. Rogers by the Business

Men of Norfolk, Va., Celebrating the Opening

of the Virginian Railway, April 3, 1909

Toastmaster:

"I have often thought that when the time comes, which must
come to all of us, when we reach that Great Way in the Great
Beyond, and the question is propounded, 'What have you done
to gain admission into this great realm? ' if the answer could be
sincerely made, 'I have made men laugh/ it would be the surest
passport to a welcome entrance. We have here to-night one who
has made millions laugh — not the loud laughter that bespeaks
the vacant mind, but the laugh of intelligent mirth that helps
the human heart and the human mind. I refer, of course, to
Doctor Clemens. I was going to say Mark Twain, his literary
title, which is a household phrase in more homes than that of
any other man, and you know him best by that dear old title."

I THANK you, Mr. Toastmaster, for the compli-
ment which you have paid me, and I am sure I
would rather have made people laugh than cry, yet
in my time I have made some of them cry ; and before
I stop entirely I hope to make some more of them
cry. I like compliments. I deal in them myself. I
have listened with the greatest pleasure to the compli-
ments which the chairman has paid to Mr. Rogers
and that road of his to-night, and I hope some of
them are deserved.

It is no small distinction to a man like that to sit
here before an intelligent crowd like this and to be

389

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

classed with Napoleon and Caesar. Why didn't he
say that this was the proudest day of his life?
Napoleon and Caesar are dead, and they can't be
here to defend themselves. But I'm here!

The chairman said, and very truly, that the most
lasting thing in the hands of man are the roads which
Caesar build, and it is true that he built a lot of them;
and they are there yet.

Yes, Caesar built a lot of roads in England, and
you can find them. But Rogers has only built one
road, and he hasn't finished that yet. I like to hear
my old friend complimented, but I don't like to hear
it overdone.

I didn't go around to-day with the others to see
what he is doing. I will do that in a quiet time,
when there is not anything going on, and when I
shall not be called upon to deliver intemperate com-
pliments on a railroad in which I own no stock.

They proposed that I go along with the committee
and help inspect that dump down yonder. I didn't
go. I saw that dump. I saw that thing when I was
coming in on the steamer, and I didn't go because I
was diffident, sentimentally diffident, about going
and looking at that thing again — that great, long,
bony thing ; it looked just like Mr. Rogers's foot.

The chairman says Mr. Rogers is full of practical
wisdom, and he is. It is intimated here that he is a
very ingenious man, and he is a very competent
financier. Maybe he is now, but it was not always
so. I know lots of private things in his life which
people don't know, and I know how he started; and
it was not a very good start. I could have done

390

ROGERS AND RAILROADS

better myself. The first time he crossed the Atlantic
he had just made the first little strike in oil, and he
was so young he did not like to ask questions. He
did not like to appear ignorant. To this day he
doesn't like to appear ignorant, but he can look as
ignorant as anybody. On board the ship they were
betting on the run of the ship, betting a couple of
shillings, or half a crown, and they proposed that
this youth from the oil regions should bet on the run
of the ship. He did not like to ask what a half
crown was, and he didn't know; but rather than be
ashamed of himself he did bet half a crown on the
run of the ship, and in bed he could not sleep. He
wondered if he could afford that outlay in case he
lost. He kept wondering over it, and said to him-
self: "A king's crown must be worth $20,000, so
half a crown would cost $10,000." He could not
afford to bet away $10,000 on the run of the ship,
so he went up to the stakeholder and gave him $150
,to let him off.

I like to hear Mr. Rogers complimented. I am
not stingy in compliments to him myself. Why, I
did it to-day when I sent his wife a telegram to com-
fort her. That is the kind of person I am. I knew
she would be uneasy about him. I knew she would
be solicitous about what he might do down here, so
I did it to quiet her and to comfort her. I said he
was doing well for a person out of practice. There is
nothing like it. He is like I used to be. There were
times when I was careless — careless in my dress when
I got older. You know how uncomfortable your wife
can get when you are going away without her super-

39i

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

intendence. Once when my wife could not go with
me (she always went with me when she could — I
always did meet that kind of luck), I was going to
Washinton once, a long time ago, in Mr. Cleveland's
first administration, and she could not go; but, in
her anxiety that I should not desecrate the house,
she made preparation. She knew that there was to
be a reception of those authors at the White House
at seven o'clock in the evening. She said, "If I
should tell you now what I want to ask of you, you
would forget it before you get to Washington, and
therefore, I have written it on a card, and you will
find it in your dress- vest pocket when you are dress-
ing at the Arlington — when you are dressing to see
the President." I never thought of it again until I
was dressing, and I felt in that pocket and took it
out, and it said, in a kind of imploring way. "Don't
wear your artics in the White House."

You complimented Mr. Rogers on his energy, his
foresightedness, complimented him in various ways,
and he has deserved those compliments, although I
say it myself; and I enjoy them all. There is one
side of Mr. Rogers that has not been mentioned. If
you will leave that to me I will touch upon that.
There was a note in an editorial in one of the Norfolk
papers this morning that touched upon that very
thing, that hidden side of Mr. Rogers, where it spoke
of Helen Keller and her affection for Mr. Rogers, to
whom she dedicated her life book. And she has a
right to feel that way, because, without the public
knowing anything about it, he rescued, if I may use
that term, that marvellous girl, that wonderful

392

ROGERS AND RAILROADS

Southern girl, that girl who was stone deaf, blind,
and dumb from scarlet fever when she was a baby
eighteen months old; and who now is as well and
thoroughly educated as any woman on this planet
at twenty-nine years of age. She is the most mar-
vellous person of her sex that has existed on this
earth since Joan of Arc.

That is not all Mr. Rogers has done; but you
never see that side of his character, because it is
never protruding ; but he lends a helping hand daily
out of that generous heart of his. You never hear
of it. He is supposed to be a moon which has one
side dark and the other bright. But the other side
though you don't see it, is not dark; it is bright, and
its rays penetrate, and others do see it who are not
God.

I would like this opportunity to tell something
that I have never been allowed to tell by Mr. Rogers,
either by my mouth or in print, and if I don't look
at him I can tell it now.

In 1893, when the publishing company of Charles
L. Webster, of which I was financial agent, failed, it
left me heavily in debt. If you will remember what
commerce was at that time you will recall that you
could not sell anything, and could not buy anything,
and I was on my back; my books were not worth
anything at all, and I could not give away my
copyrights. Mr. Rogers had long enough vision
ahead to say, "Your books have supported you
before, and after the panic is over they will support
you again," and that was a correct proposition.
He saved my copyrights, and saved me from financial

393

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

ruin. He it was who arranged with my creditors to
allow me to roam the face of the earth for four years
and persecute the nations thereof with lectures, prom-
ising that at the end of four years I would pay dollar
for dollar. That arrangement was made; otherwise
I would now be living out-of-doors under an umbrella,
and a borrowed one at that.

You see his white mustache and his head trying
to get white (he is always trying to look like me —
I don't blame him for that) . These are only emblem-
atic of his character, and that is all. 1 say, with-
out exception, hair and all, he is the whitest man I
have ever known.

394

DINNER TO MR. JEROME

A dinner to express their confidence in the integrity and good
judgment of District Attorney Jerome was given at Delmonko's
by his admirers on the evening of May 7, 1909

INDEED, that is very sudden. I was not informed
that the verdict was going to depend upon my
judgment, but that makes not the least difference in
the world when you already know all about it. It
is not any matter when you are called upon to
express it; you can get up and do it, and my verdict
has already been recorded in my heart and in my
head as regards Mr. Jerome and his administration
of the criminal affairs of this county.

I agree with everything Mr. Choate has said in
his letter regarding Mr. Jerome; I agree with every-
thing Mr. Shepard has said ; and I agree with every-
thing Mr. Jerome has said in his own commendation.
And I thought Mr. Jerome was modest in that. If
he had been talking about another officer of this
county*, he could have painted the joys and sorrows
of office and his victories in even stronger language
than he did.

I voted for Mr. Jerome in those old days, and I
should like to vote for him again if he runs for any
office. I moved out of New York, and that is the
reason, I suppose, I cannot vote for him again.
There may be some way, but I have not found it

395

MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

out. But now I am a farmer — a farmer up in Con-
necticut, and winning laurels. Those people already
speak with such high favor, admiration, of my farm-
ing, and they say that I am the only man that has
ever come to that region who could make two blades
of grass grow where only three grew before.

Well, I cannot vote for him. You see that. As it
stands now, I cannot. I am crippled in that way
and to that extent, for I would ever so much like to
do it. I am not a Congress, and I cannot distribute
pensions, and I don't know any other legitimate way
to buy a vote. But if I should think of any legitimate
way, I shall make use of it, and then I shall vote for
Mr. Jerome.

"CHE END

39*